













"o 



















"•w 



"o. ** 



.0" 



V 



<j r. > 




r 

' •. -* * JK. ^ «r c\\\\\ fl * \ * Mt/t///>S *y 

• *«-/ -^m,-- \./ .-^te-. **«♦♦ .-i$» 




<, 




4 o 



o t» 







ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 



ONE HUNDRED PER CENT 
AMERICAN 



ADDRESSES DELIVERED BY FAMOUS 
PATRIOTS OF ALL SHADES OF POLITICAL 
BELIEF AT THE SATURDAY LUNCHEON 
MEETINGS OF THE REPUBLICAN CLUB, 
NEW YORK, DURING THE YEAR 1918 

EDITED BY 

ARNON L. SQUIERS 



WITH A FOREWORD BY 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

) 






NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1918, 
By George H. Doran Company 



Printed in the United States of America 



©CI.A506911 



DEDICATED TO 

THE LOYALTY AND PATRIOTISM OF 

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 



FOREWORD 

A glance at the names of the speakers whose addresses are con- 
tained in this volume, and at the topics of the addresses them- 
selves, is enough to show that the Republican Club during the 
first year and a half since we entered the war, has subordinated 
all party or other considerations to the high ideal of service from 
all of us to the country which belongs to all of us. These speeches 
are pleas for speeding up the war and waging it with the utmost 
efficiency. They are demands that we accept no peace without 
victory. They stand for steadfast insistence upon the doctrine 
of duty, which includes the need of sacrifice ; and they scornfully 
repudiate the shameful doctrine of the pacifists that Americans 
ought to be too proud to fight for their rights and their honor 
and the interests of mankind. 

Above all they insist upon the absolute need of ioo per cent 
Americanism in this country, of thoroughgoing, undivided loy- 
alty to our flag, and of straight-out nationalism, undivided and 
untainted. Our doctrine is that this is a great nation, and not 
a polyglot boarding house. We repudiate all who profess in 
even the smallest degree a loyalty to any other nation. ■ We 
assert that no man is an American who bears in his heart the 
slightest allegiance to any other flag except ours ; and we mean 
not only the flags of foreign powers, but the red flag of anarchy 
and the black flag of that international socialism, that German- 
ized socialism, which has proved to be the tool and ally of Ger- 
man autocracy. 

The Club is proud that its membership includes Americans 
of all creeds and of all race origins. But they are all Americans 
and nothing but Americans ! We care nothing where a man was 
born; we care nothing as to the land from which his parents 
came; we stand for absolute freedom of religious belief, but 
we insist upon one flag, one language, one undivided loyalty to 
this nation and to the ideals of this nation. We are a new nation, 
differing from all other nations, friendly towards them all in so 
far as they will let us be friendly, desirous of helping them, but 

vii 



viii FOREWORD 

resolutely bent upon maintaining our separate ^«?P?jJ* 
self-reliant national existence. We accept no f^^^f^ 
icanism. We insist that all our people must be Americans ana 

only Americans. Theodore Roosevelt. 

August 15th 1918. 



AN APPRECIATION 

The days preceding the declaration of war against Germany by 
the United States on the 6th day of April, 19 17, were trying 
days. Throughout this great war now being waged for democ- 
racy, the Republican Club has subordinated every partisan feel- 
ing to wholehearted and undivided support of the Government. 
The spirit of the addresses contained in this volume voiced the 
spirit of the Club, which was to wage the war with the utmost 
force to a speedy termination. These addresses are most 
valuable contributions of constructive thought on the purposes 
of the war. 

The responsibility of the United States began on the morn- 
ing of the 4th day of August, 19 14, when the first German 
soldier put his foot on Belgian soil, and that responsibility has 
never ceased for one moment since. It was emphasized again 
when the "Lusitania" was sunk, and when the innumerable ships, 
and merchantmen on which were American citizens, were sunk 
contrary to every principle of International Law. May the 
United States never shirk (and, God willing, she never shall) one 
iota of her responsibility, until reparation has been made to the 
fullest extent of human effort in restoring Belgium, Serbia, 
Northern France and every other destroyed and looted country 
in Europe. In waging this war the United States is fighting for 
liberty, for freedom and for democracy, and for its own citi- 
zens, because this war is a war as truly defensive of the insti- 
tutions of the United States as it is a defensive war of the in- 
stitutions of Great Britain, France, Belgium and all the other 
Allies. 

Never was the individual duty of the citizen in the present 
epochal task of restoring peace to the peoples of the world more 
clearly enunciated than in these discussions, which not only 
made the walls of the Club House ring with patriotic fervor, but 
carried their message all over the world. The Club stands stead- 
fastly for a dictated peace and sets its face determinedly against 
any peace by negotiation. This attitude was most ably stated 



x AN APPRECIATION 

by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in a recent address in the United 
States Senate, as follows : 

"Belgium must be restored. 

"Alsace and Lorraine must be returned to France — uncondi- 
tionally returned — not merely because sentiment and eternal jus- 
tice demand it, but because the iron and coal of Lorraine must 
be taken forever from Germany. 

"Italia Irredenta — all those areas where the Italian race is 
predominant, including Trieste — must go back to Italy. 

"Serbia and Rumania must be reestablished in their inde- 
pendence. 

"Greece must be made safe. 

"Most important of all, if we are to make the world safe in the 
way we mean it to be safe, the great Slav population now under 
the Government of Austria — the Jugo-Slavs and the Czecho- 
slovaks, who have been used to aid the Germans, whom they 
loathe — must be established as independent states. 

"The Polish people must have an independent Poland. 

"And we must have these independent states created so that 
they will stand across the pathway of Germany to the East. 
Nothing is more vital than this for a just, a righteous and an 
enduring peace. 

"The Russian provinces taken from Russia by the villainous 
peace of Brest-Litovsk must be restored to Russia. . . . 

"Constantinople must be finally taken away from Turkey 
and placed in the hands of the allied nations as a free port, so 
as to bar Germany's way to the East and hold the Dardanelles 
open for the benefit of mankind. 

"Palestine must never return to Turkish rule and the perse- 
cuted Christians of Asia Minor — the Syrians and the Armenians 
— must be made safe." 

This was the spirit and purpose of the series of addresses 
which follow, and for which the Club Membership unalterably 
stands. The Chairman deems it a great privilege to have pre- 
sided as toastmaster at all the luncheons at which these addresses 
were given, and regards it a pleasure to express the keen appre- 
ciation which the Club feels to each one of the speakers who 
were its guests. 

August 31st, 1918. Arnon L - Squiers. 



OFFICERS OF THE REPUBLICAN CLUB 

Mr. Robert W. Bonynge 

President 

Mr. Ralph A. Day 

First Vice President 

Mr. Wm. M. K. Olcott 
Second Vice President 

Mr. Herbert L. Satterlee 
Third Vice President 

Mr. Wm. S. Denison 

Corresponding Secretary 

Mr. Oscar W. Ehrhorn 
Recording Secretary 

Mr, Taylor More 
Treasurer 



x\ 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

The Republican Club through its Saturday Discussions Com- 
mittee expresses its appreciation of the gracious cooperation of 
the notable speakers whose addresses made the Saturday Discus- 
sions not only memorable, but historical in the annals of the 
World of Thought. 

Inspired by this epochal war, these addresses were made at a 
critical time in the history of the nation. Public opinion was 
in the process of being moulded. Convictions were less set- 
tled than they were six months afterwards. 

It was a time when patriotic hearts could sound an inspiring 
rallying note for the cause of world-wide democracy. In 
many instances the messages of the speakers carried a deep spir- 
itual power, enabling their audience to carry away soul-staying 
consecration to the cause of Right. 

Again and again the true significance of the war struggle 
was depicted in all its reality. So much so that the auditors 
could not help but realize how much our patriots, the boys in 
khaki in the trenches, beset with deadly dangers, were their 
own brothers. 

Men left the Club stauncher God-fearing and God-battling 
Americans, after hearing the addresses. This being a truth that 
cannot successfully be challenged, is there much else that the 
members of the Club might say that would better convey their 
lively appreciation and gratitude? 

It is with the knowledge of the importance of these addresses 
as a permanent memorial to the history of this great war for 
human freedom, that the Club feels it a great honor to itself 
and a benefit to all Americans to put these addresses into this 
permanent form. 

The appended schedule gives the speakers and subjects. 

C. T. White. 



zu 



CONTENTS 



First Discussion: INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR PAGE 

I HON. JAMES W. GERARD 17 

II HON. HUGH GIBSON 26 

III REV. NEHEMIAH BOYNTON, D.D 35 



Second Discussion: OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 

I HON. WILLIAM S. KENYON 45 

II REV. S. PARKES CADMAN, D.D 59 

III PROF. PHILIP MARSHALL BROWN 65 

IV HON. LOUIS DE SADELEER 74 

Third Discussion: THE AIMS OF DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT 
CRISIS 

I HON. WALTER E. EDGE 8l 

II DR. SHAILER MATHEWS 87 

III HON. GEORGE E. CHAMBERLAIN 98 

IV HON. JULIUS KAHN 1 10 

V PRINCE LAZAROVICH 114 

Fourth Discussion: VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 

I HON. WM. H. SKAGGS 123 

II CAPTAIN A. P. SIMONDS, U.S. A I40 

III HON. W. M. CALDER 150 

IV REV. GEORGE R. VAN DE WATER, D.D. 153 

Fifth Discussion: WHAT HAVE WE AGAINST THE CENTRAL 
EUROPE POLICY OF GERMANY? 

I PROF. ALBERT BUSHNELL HART 1 63 

II DR. ROBERT M. MCELROY 177 

III DR. SAVIC 182 

IV REV^ J. PERCIVAL HUGET, D.D 186 

xiii 



xiv CONTENTS 

Sixth Discussion: THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR PAGE 

I HON. FREDERICK C. HICKS 197 

II REV. ISAAC J. LANSING, D.D 221 

III DR. TALCOTT WILLIAMS 238 

Seventh Discussion: UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSI- 
BILITIES 

I MR. JAMES S. LEHMAIER 253 

II MADEMOISELLE SUZANNE SILVERCRUYS 255 

III HON. MYRON T. HERRICK 268 

IV HON. MILENKO R. VESNITCH 272 

V REV. WILLIAM F. PIERCE, D.D 275 

Eighth Discussion: CANADA IN THE WAR 

I ROBERT W. BONYNGE 28l 

II SIR EDMUND WALKER, C.V.O., LL.D., D.C.L 283 

III SIR ROBERT FALCONER 298 

IV SIR WILLIAM MULOCK, LL.D 304 

V REV. ALLAN MaCROSSIE, D.D 307 

VI EARL OF ABERDEEN 309 

Ninth Discussion: THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 

I HON. JAMES M. BECK 313 

II DR. D. J. MCCARTHY 321 

III REV. J. HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D 330 

Tenth Discussion: THE WOMEN OF 1918 

I SERGEANT RUTH FARNUM 339 

II MRS. A. BURNETT-SMITH 350 

III MRS. AMELIA BINGHAM 356 

IV REV. CORNELIUS WOELFKIN, D.D 359 

Eleventh Discussion: FIGHTING THE DRAGON 

I MR. SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH 369 

II RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE 377 

III DR. ROSALIE SLAUGHTER MORTON 384 

IV PROF. GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD 389 



FIRST DISCUSSION 

JANUARY FIFTH, I918 
INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 



ONE: BY HONORABLE JAMES W. GERARD 

Former Ambassador to Germany 

I feel like Daniel in the lion's den, but you are not such very 
fierce lions, because Democrats and Republicans are now frater- 
nally carrying on the war, and in the most fraternal manner, the 
Democrats are filling all the offices and Republicans have nothing 
to do but back them up ! 

The other day when I was speaking in Los Angeles, on a trip 
through the West, when I came out and walked through the 
street, I overheard two women and a man who were walking be- 
hind me and who had been at the meeting, discussing me, and 
this is what I heard : "He is no orator ; he doesn't make any noise 
at all. He talks just the way we do." I told that to a friend of 
mine from New York, who often runs for office here. He hap- 
pened to be out examining his California properties, and he said, 
"You must not mind that. I had a similar experience in New 
York once. I overheard two women talking behind me, and one 
of them said, 'What do you think of him as a speaker?' The 
other said, 'Well, Mame, I don't know, but his trousers bag at 
the knees just like William Jennings Bryan's.' " 

I see you have for the subject of discussion, "Inside Ob- 
servations on the War." Well, I can assure you that it is very 
much more agreeable to be on the outside of the German 
Empire looking in, than it was on the inside looking out ; because 
you gentlemen can't conceive of the extraordinary hate for Amer- 
ica that now animates that whole people. The people there are 
so disciplined from the time they are four years old, that the gov- 
ernment is able to turn this stream of hate, like a garden hose, 
anywhere it pleases. In the first days of the war they all talked 
about Russia. They said it was the menace of Czarism that they 
were fighting, and then when England came into the war and saw 
she was in earnest and would be a great obstacle to their success, 
then they turned all that hate on England. They had this phrase 
of Gott straff e England. They also had pieces of jewelry manu- 
factured, bearing that phrase. It was impossible for Ameri- 

17 



18 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

cans, without being insulted, to speak their own language in the 
theaters or on the streets. Just before I left Berlin, one of our 
stenographers, a girl, attending a theater in Berlin, had her face 
slapped by half the audience because she was speaking English. 

That same hate extends over the whole of the people, and they 
intended, if they had succeeded in the.war, that is, if they had ob- 
tained the coast of France and then conquered England and split 
up Russia, there is no doubt whatever that they intended to come 
over to this country. We had there, representing American pa- 
pers, pro-German correspondents. One or two of them were not, 
but the majority of them were. They were either pro-German 
by nature or they were made pro-German, and those people, of 
their own accord, did not send out the news to the whole world 
as to what was happening in Germany. They were bound by an 
agreement which they signed not to leave the country, not to send 
out anything which was not submitted to the Foreign Office and 
to the military censorship ; so that you here were kept in ignor- 
ance of that wave of bitter hatred that was sweeping over the 
whole German Empire, and preparing for their declaration of 
what they called "ruthless submarine war/' And, at the same 
time, these people and all the American colony in Germany were 
telling them that the American people were not behind President 
Wilson; that they were in favor of Germany; and that sort of 
information was a great factor in deciding the Germans and mak- 
ing them believe that a great portion of the people of America 
was really in their favor and would declare for them. 

Now, you know to-day the great question that every one is 
thinking of is, whether there can be any peace, whether these 
offers that the German Government is making will lead to any- 
thing. They are faced to-day by this problem, that they can't 
make a peace — that is, the German people can't make a peace — 
which is not a German victory, because for years the 
people in that country have surrendered all political power 
to the autocracy. A vote amounts in Prussia to nothing at all. 
They vote under the system by which the vote of one rich man 
counts, sometimes, as much as the votes of five or six thousand. 
The districts of the Reichstag have not been changed since 1871, 
and anyway, the Reichstag means nothing, because over it is the 
Second Chamber, the equivalent, in some respects, of our United 
States Senate, where the twenty-five reigning princes of Germany 
sit; and the members of the Reichstag sit there and vote just as 
those twenty-five reigning princes tell them. 

For years all political power has been in the hands of this 
autocracy, and while there is no danger of any revolution now — 
that can't be made in a country where every one between fifteen 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 19 

and forty-five is in the army, where none but the old men and 
young boys are left at home — but their danger is that after they 
have led those people into a war which is not successful, then 
these men will come home from the trenches, come home with 
their health destroyed, their bodies maimed, their business ruined, 
their families dying of semi-starvation, and then if there is no 
successful German peace, all those men will turn around and say 
to the Kaiser, and say to his ministers and the twenty-five reigning 
kings and grand dukes and princes of Germany, ''We surrendered 
everything to you for years and you promised us in return for 
that not only an efficient government, not only commercial suc- 
cess, but you promised us the conquest of the whole world, and 
you have failed. You have ruined the country, you have failed 
in your attempt, and you are a devil of a government and we are 
going to throw you out." And that is what the autocracy is 
facing when they are endeavoring to arrange a peace. 

They have got their eyes, of course, on the west and on the 
east. On the west they want to seize Belgium. Von Tirpitz has 
said very frankly, "We have got to have Belgium for our future 
war which we will some day make on England and America." 
And then, they have their great industrial concerns. There are 
six great iron and steel companies in the west, the Rhine Valley 
and Westphalia, and they want to take that part of France which 
contains the most valuable iron ore deposits, and then if they have 
that, they will have a monopoly of the iron and steel trade of the 
Continent of Europe. So these rich manufacturers want an ex- 
tension towards the west. 

Now then, what we call the Junkers, the Prussian squires, who 
live in the country on their country estates, who hold all the offices 
in the German Army and Navy and Civil Government, who are 
the noble class, the ruling class, they say, "No, if you extend 
toward the west that increases the industrial population, that in- 
creases the number of socialists and working men, and there 
must be a corresponding increase toward the east where an agri- 
cultural population can be found, where we can colonize and 
occupy these lands." 

And so to-day the problem that they set themselves in their 
negotiations with Russia is to get from Russia the three Baltic 
Provinces, Courland, Livonia and Esthonia, and that part of 
Russia extending from Germany along the Baltic nearly to Petro- 
grad. At one time these three provinces were owned by the 
Teutonic Knights, a German organization, the same German or- 
ganization that originally owned Prussia; and the land-holding 
families of Prussia and the land-holding families of the Baltic 
Provinces are the descendants of these Teutonic Knights who 



20 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

remained on the soil, possessing it, through their laws of inheri- 
tance, unto this day. 

These provinces became at one time firmly independent; at 
one time part of Poland, at another time absorbed in Russia, and 
not until 1876 were they made entirely a part of the Russian Civil 
Government. 

Fifteen per cent, of the population is German ; the remaining 
population are Letts and Esthonians, and these fifteen per cent, 
of the population comprise all the people with money in that 
country. The descendants of the Teutonic Knights are the mer- 
chants of the cities of Riga and Libau. All the teachers, all the 
ministers of the Gospel, are German. The only thing that is Rus- 
sian are the Russian officials. The Germans themselves for years 
have had their eye on these provinces. They want to take these 
provinces and keep this native population down just as they have 
always been kept down by these German landlords. That is their 
problem. They don't want to leave these provinces. They want 
to say, "We will have an election/' and then they believe that by 
the influence of the landowners of the merchant class and of the 
bribes that they themselves will use — and they don't hesitate to 
use bribes, as you know — that they will be able, coupled with the 
fact that they are in occupation of the country, to make a false 
election return which will show that the people of those countries 
desire to be annexed to Germany. 

They want to make an independent Poland, rather than take 
Poland into their own country, because the Poles are Catholics, 
and the German ruling class is opposed to the Roman Catholic 
Church. There are three great political parties in Germany to- 
day, the Conservatives, the Socialists and the Catholics. It is the 
Catholic Party which holds the balance of power between the 
Conservatives and the Socialists. They don't want to take Poland 
in and make it part of Germany because it will add to the Catholic 
deputies in the Reichstag and make their problem so hard that 
they will be unable to withstand the Catholics who will perhaps 
hold the supreme power, if the Reichstag ever gets to the place 
where it has the power which the British Parliament or the 
American Congress holds. 

Of course, all these princes back each other up. Do you know 
that of all the Kings of Europe, the King of Italy and the King of 
Montenegro are the only two royalties who are not related to the 
German royal house by marriage or by blood ? And it has been 
their policy always to back up these royalties ever since the Holy 
Alliance of 1815. 

If the Russians succeed in bringing together an army — even 
the semblance of an army, and holding those provinces, that wilJ 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 21 

be a great advantage to the Allies, because the Germans, by their 
superior agricultural methods, can go into those provinces and 
produce great quantities of foodstuffs. Taken together, these 
Baltic Provinces are the same area as Wurtemburg and Bavaria 
taken together, which have a population of two millions, while 
the latter provinces have eight millions. 

That is the problem that is going on under your eyes at this 
very moment, the attempt of the German Empire to get from 
the Revolutionary Government these three Baltic Provinces. 

You ask me now three questions, and I will answer them and 
then I will sit down and give way to the next speaker. Tell me 
what you want me to talk about and ask me some questions. 

Then came the following questions and Judge Gerard's 
answers : 

Tell us some of your personal experiences in Berlin? 

Your Chairman asks me about the lamp-post story. That shows 
this peculiar state of mind into which the Germans had worked 
themselves about America. You remember they have had a 
propaganda here, going on for twenty-five years under our noses ? 
I was speaking not long ago in a Republican meeting at the Ham- 
ilton Club at Chicago. I got there in the afternoon and decided 
to examine what school books were used in Chicago. I found 
that they had the Prussian royal arms stamped on the outside, 
and they were full of anecdotes telling what good, kind, pleasant 
people the present Kaiser and all his ancestors were! We have 
the same thing here in our own public schools. When I came 
back here I sent out and got a lot of these school books. The 
worst ones had been published since the commencement of the 
war, showing how their propaganda works all the time. In one of 
these they had the German national hymn, "Die Wacht am Rhine." 
It was printed twice, once in the text and then at the end, with 
music. Now just imagine what would have happened to a Ger- 
man school teacher if he had been caught teaching his pupils to 
sing "Britannia" or "The Star Spangled Banner" ! It would 
have been "Good Night" in night, because one of the ways which 
they, the Prussian officials, hold their peoples together is by the 
secret court. They try their officials (and a school teacher, or a 
postman is an official of the government, and they are tried for 
any offence), not in a regular court, but in a secret court where 
they can be adequately punished if they have not taught the 
Divine Right of the Emperor. They thought because they had 
"propagandaed" us for years, and because of the Messages of 
this country, that this country would do nothing at all ; and once, 
when I was talking with Zimmermann after the sinking of the 



22 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Lusitania, he said, pounding on the table with his fists, "Your 
government can't do anything. You don't dare do anything 
against the German Government, because we have in America 
to-day five hundred thousand German reservists who will rise in 
arms against your government if you dare to make a move against 
us." I told him then what you have heard since, that we had 
five hundred and one thousand lamp-posts in America and that 
was where those reservists would find themselves hanging." 

What did he say to that ? 

/ said, "If you can show me one single American citizen of 
German descent, who has come over with a passport to fight in 
your army, I will believe what you have said, because, for the 
whole winter, they have been able to come over with passports to 
Scandinavia, and they could have got into Germany and fought 
for you ; if you can find one single man, other than one crazy Yale 
student who went over to fight in the German Army, I will be- 
lieve you." That is why I can't understand why these few West- 
ern Senators can go about the country as they do and you see it is 
something that the Germans can't understand. They say, "If these 
people are allowed to live there must be a sentiment in our favor 
in America." When they take up the paper and read what these 
people are allowed to say in this country, knowing what would 
happen to them, why, the German says, "There must be a senti- 
ment in favor of Germany, in spite of the declaration of war, 
because these people are allowed to go about and talk in this way 
in America and still live." That is the way the German looks 
on it, and that is why these people who say they are against our 
going to war with Germany have done more than any other class 
to get us into the war, because they gave the German this idea 
that there were these five hundred thousand reservists and there 
was this great body of Americans sympathizing with the Kaiser 
and with the German cause. 

What do they do with American citizens in Germany now ? 

I saw one American who left there on the 16th of May, and 
at that time he was compelled to report to the police twice daily 
and was not allowed to go out of his house after eight o'clock at 
night. 

What is the real food situation in Germany and what are the 
prices of food? 

Personally, I could live cheaper in Germany during the war 
than I could in New York before the war. But the food situation, 
as a matter of fact, I don't think is a material factor, other than 
the fact that it annoys the population and makes them nervous 
and underfed and subject to disease, but they can manage to last 
through with their food, although at the time I left they were 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 23 

getting practically nothing to eat. The allowance then (every- 
thing was on the card system), nearly a year ago, was only a 
small slice of bread which lasted them for the day, a square of 
meat which included the bone and gristle, which lasted them for 
a week, three to five pounds of potatoes in a week, one egg every 
two weeks. And all those magnificent frontal effects Germans 
carried so proudly have disappeared ! 

What about the treatment of prisoners? 

They have been treated with unexampled cruelty. There 
never has been in the history of the world such a history of con- 
tinued, official, deliberate cruelty. There have been instances 
where one commander was responsible for some cases of cruelty, 
but in this war it was the official treatment of prisoners of war. 
Some of them have now been prisoners in Germany for three 
and a half years, and during that time they have been given by 
the German Government nothing except their little ration of 
bread that they could not eat with a spoon, a cup of something 
that they call coffee which is made from an extract of acorns, 
with no nourishment or stimulus in it whatever, and in the middle 
of the day a thick soup made of vegetables, mostly potatoes and 
carrots. It is an absolute starvation ration. The English and 
French prisoners were taken care of by the packages which were 
sent from home, but the Russians ! I have been in camp there 
and have seen the English and French prisoners with their pack- 
ages, and the Russians standing around hoping they might get a 
crumb from some of these packages. They carry on all the work 
of Germany with those two million prisoners of war. They are 
leased out like slaves. A man comes to the commander and says, 
"I have a farm or a factory and I want 250 prisoners," and they 
come to him with a guard and he carries them off. They get a 
little better food than they do in the camp, but the only improve- 
ment is that the midday soup is strengthened. A little stale fish 
is put in it, and occasionally a very little meat. Their own sol- 
diers are.fed according to the distance from the firing line. The 
ones nearest to the firing line are well fed. 

Judge Gerard, will they be able to repress or restrain the So- 
cialist element in Germany for any long continued period, or is 
that to be relied upon as an element in the war ? 

They will be able to repress them until after the war because 
the police are very strong and the officers in the army are all 
taken from the noble class, and therefore you can't have the situa- 
tion that you had in Russia of whole regiments going over to the 
Revolution. 

What is the present morale of the German Army? 

A few months ago it was very bad, but lately, since their sue- 



24 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

cess in Italy and since the Revolution in Russia, they feel that 
they have a very good chance of winning. 

Does the Kaiser really believe he is divine? 

I think he does. 

Can any reliable news from America get across the line now ? 

I don't think so. 

A question which has puzzled a great many is, where Germany 
gets the material for ordnance, munitions, etc. I mean copper, 
rubber, etc. Other nations have great difficulty in getting these 
materials. How in the world do they get it ? 

Well, they have all the iron and copper and steel necessary in 
their own country, both in Westphalia and Silesia. Besides, they 
get copper from one place in Saxony, 25,000,000 pounds a year. 
They have another copper mine they took from the Serbians, 
and two in Southern Poland. Besides that, they took all the cop- 
per kitchen utensils in Germany, the roofs off a great many build- 
ings, the doors off those big porcelain ovens that you see in every 
German house — all those were melted down. They make their 
smokeless powder from wood pulp instead of cotton. They have 
a great zinc mine in Belgium which they are working, and they 
have other zinc mines in the Baltic Provinces, and what else do 
they need? Rubber? The Deutschland brought them over a 
great quantity of nickel, platinum and rubber, and then remember 
that in the conquered countries they seized everything in the way 
of materials and shipped them into Germany, which gave them a 
great store, and rubber they don't require so much of. That is 
only for their automobile tires, and by taking all the automobiles 
early in the war they have tires enough. 

How about oil? 

They get oil from Galicia and then from Rumania. 

What do they dress in ? Their clothes must be worn out. 

Your clothes will last a long time, and you always find stores 
of clothes laid away. Besides, they have men who go over the 
battle field and every corpse is stripped and the clothes and shoes 
are renovated and used over again. They seized great quantities 
of clothing in Belgium and in France. The great spinning towns 
of Northern France are Lille and Amiens and Rouen. Well, then, 
they covet them, also the spinning towns in Poland, because for 
two years you couldn't buy anything in Germany in cotton or wool 
without a permit from a police magistrate. If you wanted a pair 
of socks of cotton or wool, you had to make an application to a 
magistrate and he sends a policeman to look over your wardrobe, 
to see if you really need them. This does not refer to silk socks, 
but to cotton and woolen ones. 

What is the situation in railway equipment at the present time ? 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 25 

They have managed to keep it up fairly well. Their great 
need there was for axle grease. But at one time it apparently 
was on the point of breaking down, because their forces were so 
far from Germany, towards Rumania and up through these Baltic 
Provinces of Russia. 

About how many men has Germany in her army? 

They have never told how many men they have. The only 
way I could make a calculation was from a large shooting pre- 
serve near Berlin, and on that there was a village of six hundred 
inhabitants, men, women and children, no had been called into 
the army. You see that is over one-sixth. Now you take one- 
sixth of the 72,000,000 population of Germany, and you have over 
12,000,000 who were called to the colors. 

In your opinion, does the present condition in Russia tend to 
unite the German mind, or is the opposite true ? 

Anything which is a success for the Germans or a defeat for 
their adversaries of course encourages the whole population, and 
they are encouraged because of the breakdown in Russia. 

Will it strengthen the Socialist Party in Germany? 

I think so, especially when the prisoners come home. You 
see, in Russia there are probably eleven or twelve hundred thou- 
sand prisoners of war of Austria and Germany. Now, of course, 
when they have seen the Russians cavorting and capering around 
and dividing up the land and doing what they please, they are 
going to tell about it when they go back to Germany ; but, on the 
other hand, they will be seized by the military and put in the army 
again. 

Judge Gerard, I heard you at the Lawyer's Club tell about 
hearing the Kaiser say he wouldn't stand any nonsense from the 
United States. I would like to have you repeat that interview 
and also state whether you reported that interview to our govern- 
ment. 

That interview occurred on the 25th of October, 191 5. I 
had been for a long time trying to force an audience with the 
Kaiser, because he said that he would not receive the ambassador 
of a country which was selling arms and ammunition and sup- 
plies to the enemies of Germany, and this, although by custom 
an ambassador is supposed to have the right to demand an audi- 
ence with the Kaiser at any time. He refused for nearly a year 
— for over a year — to see me on that ground, and then, when I 
finally forced an audience I went into his room where he was 
at Potsdam, and he was alone in this large room, standing by the 
window. I came into the room and stood in front of him and 
made a low bow, and he immediately walked right up to me and 
shook his fist in my face and commenced the interview and im- 



26 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

mediately said, "I shall stand no nonsense from America after 
this war. America had better look out after this war." And he 
kept repeating that at intervals during this interview which lasted 
for more than an hour, and of course I did report that, as was 
my duty, back to this country. That was in October, 191 5. And 
that is another reason, of course, — well, I am glad to see we are 
being prepared ! 

Is the Kaiser interested in the Krupps? 

I think he is a stockholder in Krupps, and also in the Ham- 
burg-American Line. 



TWO: BY HONORABLE HUGH GIBSON 

Chief of the Division of Foreign Intelligence of the State 

Department 

I quite realize the audacity of trying to tell you anything about 
Germany in the presence of Mr. Gerard, for he speaks with an 
authority and knowledge and experience that no other American 
can claim, but I can, perhaps, compromise with my diffidence in 
this matter by telling of a phase of the question which he has not 
touched upon, and that is, what went on in Belgium. I shall not 
try to give you any carefully prepared, theoretical treatise on the 
German form of government, but if you will bear with me for a 
little while, while I move about from one subject to another, with- 
out any particular sequence, I shall try to give you an idea of 
what it feels like to live under the dominion of Germany in con- 
quered territory where the German is undisputed master. 

To begin with, I was in Belgium when the Germans came, 
and may add that a kind-hearted State Department had sent me 
there for a rest cure which they thought I needed. As late as the 
17th of August I motored toward Liege, and got about twenty 
miles outside, but saw no evidence of a cavalry skirmish in which 
the Germans had been engaged, and came back quite optimistic. 
But I had not reckoned on the speed of the German Army. 
About forty-eight hours later we got the first news of the im- 
pending invasion and Brussels was overrun with refugees. There 
was no time for escape or for preparation. The next afternoon 
the German Army entered Brussels in triumph, garlands of flow- 
ers about the muzzles of their cannon. 

The German methods to be pursued in Belgium had been care- 
fully worked out years in advance, and were put in effect with- 
out loss of time. That first afternoon a temporary government 
was established at Hotel de Ville, all telephone and telegraph 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 27 

wires were cut, the Post Office taken over by the military. The 
newspaper offices were closed, presses seized and a ban put on all 
printing. Most of the conveniences which we had come to take 
for granted were stopped without warning, and the population of 
several million of people had to adapt themselves over night to an 
entirely new form of life under a truculent soldiery that did more 
to provoke trouble than to prevent it. 

That first afternoon a proclamation was posted throughout the 
city. It called upon the population to pursue its normal occupa- 
tions, which mandate was followed by a long list of offenses 
which would be punished with severity. The next afternoon, as 
if that was not enough, they put up some big red posters all over 
the country, announcing that villages where hostile acts were 
committed would be burned to the ground ; that punishment for 
the destruction of roads and bridges would be visited on the near- 
est village, regardless of its guilt ; that hostages would be taken 
in every street of the town and put to death, in case of disorders, 
and that the innocent would be mercilessly punished with the 
guilty. That sounded pretty bad, but it was not nearly so bad 
as what really happened. Almost immediately we began to hear 
the stories of thousands of refugees from places where a care- 
fully prepared system of atrocities had been put into effect. At 
first we found it utterly impossible to place any credence in these 
stories and put them down unhesitatingly to the hysteria of badly 
frightened people. We were unable to believe that any civilized 
power could countenance such deeds as were forced upon us. 

Gradually, however, the horror of the whole system dawned 
upon us. At first our imagination staggered under the shock ; 
but in a surprisingly short time we reached the state of callous- 
ness — perhaps I should say, numbness — where we could accept 
these things as a part of the day's work, and before we got through 
we could listen with a degree of calmness that would make your 
blood run cold. 

I will say this, that that first army that went raging through 
Belgium and Northern France committed, with the approval and 
countenance of its officers, every imaginable barbarity — arson, 
pillage, torture, mutilation, murder and rape. The stories of 
what they did are not the product of inflamed imagination. They 
are only too true. What has been published is bad enough, but 
the whole truth on that subject will never be known until the 
Germans have been driven out of Belgium and Northern France 
and the people who remain there are free to speak and can show 
the proofs they have, documents, photographs and human ex- 
hibits, that will horrify the world. 

The first thing they did was to cut Belgium off from the out- 



28 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

side world, and then to fill the minds of the people with news o£ 
German manufacture, this with the idea of trying to convince 
them of the inevitable success of the German Army. All Bel- 
gian newspapers were suppressed. For several months all Ger- 
man newspapers were cut off, with two exceptions; but despite 
all prohibitions and all the precautions that Germans could take 
along the frontier, some were smuggled in, mostly Dutch and 
English. On the whole, they did very little to defeat the German 
purpose to keep the people in the dark. The first weeks of the 
war, before the Germans had learned the tricks of the people 
along the frontier, you could buy a London paper at from five to 
twenty francs. Later, when the practice became more risky, 
prices went up to 150 francs, or about $30. Smugglers found it 
more advantageous to rent their papers for half-hour periods, 
then sit on the doorsteps and wait the half hour, pass on to the 
next customer and the next, until toward the close of the day 
when the papers would be sold by the smugglers for a most sat- 
isfactory figure ! 

But, as I say, the Germans practically, effectually, stopped the 
flow of news. Then they set about a carefully conceived system 
oi filling the minds of the people with doubt and dismay. Every 
morning the walls were covered with German news bulletins, in 
German, Flemish and French. Everything that was considered 
"fit to print." Although the people knew perfectly well that these 
posters were filled with lies and half truths and threats, there was 
no resisting the curiosity to know what the Germans had to say, 
with the result that by night the Germans had accomplished their 
purpose. These bulletins were very optimistic, so far as the Ger- 
mans were concerned. They made no references to German re- 
verses, but were filled with the stories of German victories, liber- 
ally sprinkled with such phrase as "success with the help of God" 
and all that sort of thing. When the battle line was on the Bel- 
gian front, they laid stress on the terrible slaughter of Belgians, 
English and French ; they laid stress on the damage done by the 
British and French guns on the Belgian towns. When German 
reverses would come there was no mention of them, but we were 
given special facilities for hearing what was happening in other 
theaters of war where Germans were more fortunate. When 
von Kluck was driven back from the Marne, there was no men- 
tion made of it; but we had most delightful news of what was 
going on in Serbia and elsewhere. 

The Belgians are incurably optimistic. At first they spoke 
openly, but after a number of them had been punished by military 
tribunal for disrespect to the German Empire, they became a lit- 
tle more discreet, and after that they simply laughed. But that, 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 29 

too, was displeasing to the Governor-General, and it was made 
known that any one who was seen to laugh would be severely pun- 
ished by the German authorities. 

And with these news bulletins we had every day the laws. 
Laws were made with great frequency, which prescribed with 
minute detail how we were to conduct ourselves. Every act in 
the streets of the city and in our homes was covered by regula- 
tions, forbidding this, imposing that, and always the price in 
blood or money for any breach of German rule, and frequently 
with this the list of the people who had been put in prison, fined 
in money, or shot for disregard of these German rules, for travel- 
ing without a pass, for any one of a number of offenses or for sus- 
picion. There was no limit to the number of offenses or the num- 
ber of convictions. It was estimated that about eighty-five thou- 
sand had been either shot or sent to Germany as prisoners, or 
fined for having displeased the Germans in various ways. 

Knowing the sort of men we had over us, we were quite pre- 
pared for tyranny in the important things, but we never were 
able to understand how the Germans, a people with a war on 
their hands, found time for the petty persecutions with which 
they goaded the Belgians. Every day brought fresh evidence of 
it. I remember one small boy of my acquaintance, about seven 
years old, who was very much amused by the German goose-step. 
One day, when a company of soldiers was passing his house, he 
fell in behind them and gave the best imitation he could. He 
was collared and taken off. We couldn't take it very seriously. 
That was early in the war, and we didn't know as much as we 
do now; but in order to relieve his mother's anxiety, we sent a 
member of the Legation Staff to bring the small boy back. We 
found the boy in a cell and a number of officers watching him. 
It was proposed to leave him in jail for three days. It took our 
best efforts for the rest of the day to get him off. 

Not long after, the Cardinal — Cardinal Mercier — was going 
through the streets, and was cheered by the street crowds. They 
arrested as many of the crowd as they could bag, and imposed 
a fine of one million marks on the city. That sort of thing went 
on every day, and it seemed to occupy about two-thirds of the 
time of the authorities, time they might have been devoting to 
other things. 

The first important victim of this policy of pin-pricks was a 
man you all know, Adolph Max, the Burgomaster of Brussels. 
When the Germans came in, he was saddled with the responsibil- 
ity for everything that happened. They forbade him making his 
views known to his people by official proclamation. Early in 
September the Military Governor of Brussels put up a proclama- 



M ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

' ' ' ' 

Max gc 

g \ had 

- 
he was fc ■ ~ > she 

i 

i solera 

The 

urise, Max n 

- 

a . s i his absent ; 
^ g excused 

;mor- 

I all and v \ ; 

■ - - ! ^v.c. V. 

! 

had a 

s 
pratvs: ax a >ians r g 

■ • . ■ :-:< , ■ : ;. 

. - 

• ■ cranny's interests, his 

id thine to inflame the 

. c 

war broke oc: Rome, 

'"'-:-" : : • *■:;;•« :".- ■ : .■;■/. ■;:.-" ::;.;:;> ; : : • : J r :- 

C :; :\'c:.:v 

... f :;:v..vv.ej 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 31 

ever since, save for one short trip to Rome where he spoke his 
mind. He travels about the country constantly, counseling the 
people, relieving want, comforting the bereaved, always advising 
them to maintain public order, but to keep up their courage and 
to resist the overtures of the Germans, in full confidence of final 
deliverance. Once in a while the German Governor-General takes 
exception to what the Cardinal says, and sends him a characteris- 
tically brutal letter. The Cardinal takes up his pen, makes his 
reply in courteous terms and always succeeds in making the Gov- 
ernor-General ridiculous. 

He has, among other things, a very nice sense of humor, and 
a very comforting twinkle in his eye. I remember the last time 
we saw it was when an American of some substance stopped to 
pay his respects. He was received by the Cardinal and was com- 
pletely fascinated by him. When the time came for the American 
to go, he held out his hand and said, "There is one thing I want 
to say to you, and that is, you are a Catholic and I am a Presby- 
terian, but I want to tell you I have got no prejudice against you 
whatever." He will be remembered chiefly by his patriotic and 
righteous fight, and by his pastoral letters which are read in every 
church in the country. He wields an influence which the Germans 
dread, and yet his hold upon the people is such that they dare not 
touch him, no matter what he does, and he has undone the work 
of the German Army Corps and brought many of the schemes of 
the Governor-General to naught. 

I have spoken of the Belgian sense of humor and the comfort 
it brings them. There are about as many stories of that as there 
are of German persecution. For instance, very early in the war, 
every Belgian wore in his buttonhole a little rosette with the na- 
tional colors, but the Germans didn't like that and they got out a 
proclamation forbidding any display of the Belgian national col- 
ors. After that we noticed every Belgian wore an ivy leaf in his 
buttonhole, and we found out that the motto of that was, "I die 
where I cling." Well, the Germans were annoyed by the ivy leaf, 
and issued another proclamation forbidding the wearing of that. 
Soon after that a lot of the more daring humorists came out with 
little scraps of paper in their button holes ! 

On the first anniversary of the German occupation the Ger- 
mans were afraid there might be manifestations of some sort, so 
they gave an order that the shops should remain open instead of 
closing as they usually did. The Belgians passed around word, 
and there were no customers. Every top hat in Brussels was got 
out and polished so you could see your face in it. There was not 
much the Germans could do about it. Crowds dressed in their 
holiday best promenaded up and down the streets, and the shop- 



32 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

keepers sat in their doorways, but never a customer was there 
that day. We found out the Germans were going to be obeyed 
any way, so they put up a proclamation saying that all these places 
must close at eight o'clock ! 

Sometimes their wit took a more practical turn. One poor 
peasant — the only thing he had in the world was a pig he had fat- 
tened for the market. When the German Army was coming he 
was beside himself with fear that they would take his pig away. 
So he and his wife decided to kill the pig. After they had cleaned 
it they laid it in their own bed, laid a white sheet over it and put 
candles at the foot and head. Later, when the German Army 
arrived, the peasant and his wife came out with streaming eyes, 
saying, "Death has visited this house." The whole crowd stood 
rigidly at attention and then went out on tiptoe. 

Perhaps the one thing that bothered us more than anything 
else was the German system of espionage. The Governor-Gen- 
eral had a huge army of these people in order to keep informed 
about what was going on, but they were usually unscrupulous, 
ignorant and underpaid. They wandered about, looking not so 
much for news or information as for people they could denounce. 
If a spy brought in no one for punishment he was dropped. It 
was "up to him" to bring in offenders. The result is that thou- 
sands of Belgians were punished for offenses they never com- 
mitted, and that never occurred. 

I, myself, had a good deal of experience with the German 
espionage system. The Governor-General did me the honor of 
attaching a spy to my person. He used to follow me about the 
streets when I went out. The rest of the time he leaned up against 
the front of my house to watch the people who came and went. 
He was rather pathetic. Sometimes I used to go out on a windy, 
cold night and tell him I was not expecting any more callers and 
tell him he was excused for the night ! Altogether he had a pretty 
good time, but one time he was missing for about a week. When 
he came back I patted him on the back and told him as seriously 
as I could that he was the poorest excuse for a spy I had ever 
seen. He was really a good deal worried about it, especially 
when I told him solemnly that I felt he had neglected me and if 
he didn't do better I should have to have him discharged ! You 
can imagine about how useful he would have been as a spy if any- 
thing had been going on ! But, in spite of all the spies could do, 
the Belgians put over anything they felt the need of, and under 
the nose of the Governor-General. 

They set up in out of the way corners the publication of sev- 
eral clandestine newspapers. The Liberte Belgique, which has 
been published now for about two and a half years, contains arti- 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 33 

cles written to stimulate the patriotism of the people and turn the 
Germans to ridicule and contempt. And the most amusing fea- 
ture of it all is that the Governor-General gets his copy regularly ! 
He has never been able to find out where it comes from, and has 
offered rewards of a hundred thousand marks for information 
leading to the capture of the publishers. One day he finds it on 
the blotter of his desk ; another day it is thrown in the window ; 
another day it comes to him with his soup or vegetables ; another 
day it comes to him in his mail with a bundle of German dis- 
patches ! It so got on the nerves of von Bissing that he is said 
to have gone into a tantrum every time it appeared. The articles 
in this paper and others like it are always filled with the same 
message to the people. The articles are read and discussed and 
really do a great deal toward keeping up the morale of the peo- 
ple, and, incidentally, any Belgian who reads one of these papers 
has the feeling that he is outwitting the tyrant, and there is a lot 
of comfort in that feeling. 

Another thing that bothered us was the German love of bully- 
ing. Every German under that system is supposed to bully some 
other German. Every day brought a hundred instances of this 
fact that the Belgians were persecuted and browbeaten, and the 
only time we got any comfort out of it was once when the system 
slipped and hit the wrong man. The delegates of the Relief Com- 
mission were stopped at the frontier, stripped and searched. One 
day Mr. Hoover and I made complaint to the Governor-General 
about it. He said this was all rubbish and we were either mis- 
informed or we exaggerated. Then somebody had the bright idea 
of suggesting that we be accompanied by a German officer in civil- 
ian clothes, to see how it worked out in practice. As luck would 
have it, we had a young man, the son of a Cabinet official. When 
they got to the frontier a soldier came and roughly ordered every 
one to get out of the car. The young man answered that he held a 
pass. The only answer was that four soldiers grabbed him by 
the legs and pulled him out of the car into the road and an officer 
came out and told him to go into the guard house and stay there. 
Another officer came out and the young man held up his pass. 
The whole proceeding was an outrage, and the victim so expressed 
himself. At that, the officer seized him by the throat and they 
beat him up and choked him and pounded him, and they finally 
reduced him to a state of pulp, and then put him under arrest, 
packed him into a military car, carried him back to Brussels and 
then tried to find out whether his pass was any good! Within 
an hour, everybody in Brussels knew about this, and was rejoic- 
ing in the fact that one of the boches got a taste of the other end 
of the stick. The next day I saw him and his face was so swollen 



34 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

he could hardly talk out of one side of his mouth, and his dis- 
position was in a dangerous state of inflammation. One thing 
that pained him more than anything else was this ; he said, "That 
big man with the black beard that was kicking me from behind— 
that was a professor of ethics in the University of Munich." 

Perhaps in my anxiety to avoid telling you horrors, I have laid 
too much stress on the lighter side of life there. I have spared 
you a detailed recital of atrocities. I haven't told you anything 
of the systematic plan for the economic ruin of Belgium, the im- 
position of crushing fines on the slightest provocation, the carry- 
ing out of Belgium of all the raw materials and machinery so that 
Belgium should be stripped at the end of the war. Then, too, to 
my mind, the deportation ranks with the atrocities. They are a 
reversal to the same barbarism. They were undertaken cold- 
bloodedly for several purposes; first, to clear out a population 
that might be useful to the Allies when Belgium was delivered ; 
second, to utilize the work of the people, as they couldn't do un- 
less they had them under some sort of compulsion; and lastly, 
to break the spirit of the people and make them sue for peace 
rather than suffer more. Those who refused to work were beaten 
and starved, and then, when their health was broken down under 
this treatment, they were sent home to die of pneumonia or tuber- 
culosis. It is a splendid tribute to the stamina of the people that 
they have never weakened under this treatment, and they are just 
as courageous and full of determination as they ever were. 

In spite of all these things, the Germans continue to wonder 
why the Belgians don't love them! They probably never will 
understand ; but the fact remains that by their barbarity and by 
their tyranny and incredible stupidity, they have done everything 
to increase Belgium's hatred of them and to strengthen their de- 
termination to hold out until deliverance comes, and that is where 
democracy tells. A people that has known a democracy such as 
has prevailed in Belgium is supported by an enduring and reason- 
ing courage that no autocracy can stifle, and perhaps the best 
proof of it is this: I have talked to thousands of them, and 
have never found one who regretted the decision of his king to 
accept death itself rather than yield, and who, if the choice was 
to be made over again, could make any other decision than the 
one that was made so unhesitatingly. A people like that cannot 
be conquered by German method or by German arms. 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 35 



THREE: BY REVEREND NEHEMIAH BOYNTON, D.D. 

I claim the right, just for a moment, to stand before you as a 
parish priest, and say my word of appreciation of that magnificent 
character who was referred to in the opening of our exercises. 
For Mr. Cragin was one of my own parishioners, and my relation- 
ships with him were of a peculiarly intimate character — in fact, 
when he was meditating the forming of this Saturday Discussions 
Club, he took me into his confidence because I had been a mem- 
ber of a similar club in another city and knew something about 
the way in which it worked. I had the very great privilege of 
giving to him the benefit of whatever wisdom I had, and for the 
first few years of the life of this Saturday Discussions Club, over 
and over again I had beneath my eye the anticipated programmes 
as we talked together about those great themes which could prop- 
erly be brought before the attention of a company of red-blooded 
men and discussed, not in the interests of small partisanship, but 
in the interests of a large Americanism, and that was the charac- 
teristic of this translated friend of ours, that he found where the 
larger things of life were in residence and took up his apartments 
there. There are some people who are like the donkey and can 
see only to the end of their noses, and if they do see a bit beyond, 
they are like the donkey in that they only discern a bundle of hay ; 
but those people, after all, do not measure the symmetry, the 
magnitude, the proportion of life. They do not know what that 
eminent old saint meant when he had engraved as the epitaph 
upon his own tomb, "Just Think of Living." 

Mr. Cragin was a man whose pocket-book was rather shallow, 
but there was nothing shallow about his brain, and his heart was 
very deep indeed. He answered to that word of Goethe's as well 
as most men, — Goethe, who said that the greatest compliment he 
ever received was by some one who called him a circumambient 
man, a man who could go all around things and from various 
points of view see his work in a true, in a broad and in a grow- 
ing horizon. Some people say he has passed out. I do not like 
the expression. He has passed on. For, beyond the assurances 
in our Book of God with relation to the unending day, we have in 
these last years the word of no less a scientist than Sir Oliver 
Lodge, probably the leading scientist in the world to-day, who has 
made this prophetic remark that a moment like this will send home 
to the hearts of every one, "The extinction of personality is some- 
thing that does not happen." 



36 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

He does well who does his best. 
Is he weary? Let him rest. 
Brother, I have done my best; 
I am weary, let me rest, 
Saying not, "Good night," 
But in some brighter clime 
Bid me "good morning." 

Exit the parish priest. And enter the humble chaplain in the 
service of the United States. 

It may seem strange that in presence of the Ambassador and 
of the diplomat, one should be asked to say something from the 
standpoint of the warrior, especially if he be the kind of a war- 
rior whose footpaths are supposed to be those of peace ; but I am 
not altogether out of place in this assemblage and at this time, 
because, thus far in our discussions this afternoon, we have been 
far, far away, over the sea. Our indignation has been aroused 
by the sense of outrage on the one hand, and our own purposes 
have been strengthened by new resolutions to adhere to our na- 
tional determinations, on the other hand. Now it is time for us 
to sail back again over the sea and ask ourselves two or three 
simple questions concerning the status of the war in our own land. 

Were the hour earlier and the time longer, I should like to 
tell you how I, myself, appeared a little while ago in France as the 
ambassador of peace, and how I hope to appear a little time later 
as a representative of war. I had been appointed one of a very 
outstanding international company of men who were to meet by 
the side of beautiful Lake Geneva in 1914, in the summer, and 
arrange the few last necessities for the peace of the whole world, 
and, gentlemen, we stood a mighty good chance, when we sailed 
from America, of being able to accomplish just that thing. The 
world was just in the condition, and if it had not been that the 
Kaiser loved yachting as well as I do — I know the temptation of 
yachting in the summertime — and the Crown Prince loved war 
a good deal better than I do, it is not impossible that the results 
of that international conference, which was to have included dele- 
gates from Germany as from the other nations in the world, 
might have put the present-day situation of the world in a very 
different attitude. I arrived in Paris on that fateful Sunday 
when war was declared, concerning which I only wish to say 
to you that anybody in America who had regarded himself as an 
uncompromising pacifist could not have had the experience and 
seen the visions which I saw on that day and on the days follow- 
ing, and come home to our country with any other than a respect 
in the very depths of his soul for a nation like our own, which, 
in the fullness of time, would announce a determined attitude 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 37 

against the despotism of the invader, and a passion in his own 
heart to lend whatever strength had been his for the time being 
in the interests of peace, to the idea of war, until righteousness 
and justice should again obtain among the nations of the earth 
and the respect that is due to an ordinary mortal be vouchsafed 
to him in the north and east and south and on the west. 

But that was some time ago, and I found myself one day, 
having been the happy chaplain of a distinguished regiment for 
six years, summoned to make the choice between going with my 
boys and enlisting in the service of the United States, and making 
the other remark which is sometimes done, that, inasmuch as 
time had placed its hand with a somewhat revelatory effect upon 
my unkept and uncovered head, it would perhaps be better for 
me to let the younger men go. Not on your life ! 

The chance was too great ; the price was too precious, and so, 
on went the uniform with joy undefiled, and away went the parson 
and in came the real chaplain. I suppose you will want to know 
how the uniform feels. Well, in the language of the up-to-date 
tailor, "It fits well around the neck," and especially over the heart. 

I am proud to stand here for just a very few moments as the 
representative of the young life of America, which has sworn 
anew its allegiance to the stars and stripes, and which is waiting 
for the destined hour when it can prove to the world that America 
is something more than a nation of dollar-hunters; a country 
which believes that eternal principles are worth not only de- 
fending to the utmost, but offering everything that a true Ameri- 
can has. I am proud to represent those boys, and have only 
three simple things that I want to say to you men with relation 
to them ; I want to say, in the first place, that anybody who knows 
what is going on understands that our camps and our forts to-day 
are the places where we are engaged in character-making, and not 
in character-smashing! There is a certain type of lugubrious 
piety which seems to be particularly fond of dwelling on the 
salacious, and which transfers its thought of the salacious to the 
boys who are wearing the khaki. God forgive her, but there 
was a woman in Connecticut the other day, according to the 
papers, who addressed a company of her sisters and remarked 
that there was now a new "yellow peril," and that that was the 
boys who wore the khaki. She had come to believe that every 
boy who put on the khaki was, by that fact, under suspicion 

Now, I am not even going to narrate them — you have all 
heard them over and over again — these stories of character- 
smashing which are attributed to our boys in the camp and in the 
fort, until one would almost think that the first thing a young 
American does when he enlists in our magnificent army is to play 



38 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

football with his own character. There is no greater lie being 
disseminated in America to-day, and there is no keener insult 
to my son and to your son than to permit such rattle-brained 
statements to go reeling around on their way. I know what I 
am talking about. I know it absolutely, because I make it part of 
my business to stand every now and then and watch their physical 
examination, and after I have watched their physical examination, 
I have access to the officers' records, and I want to tell you this : 
If a young man has forfeited his character before he has en- 
listed in the army and is paying in his own person the awful 
penalty for that forfeiture you don't expect the next morning 
to see the angels' wings springing from his shoulders, do you? 
You don't in civil life, anyway. And, on the other hand, if a 
young man has come, as a vast, vast, vast majority of our young 
men in the army do, who have enlisted under the call of the 
President have come, with pure lives and with masterful purposes, 
you don't see the horns of the Devil springing up out of the heads 
of these young kids, either. The thing which surprises you and 
amazes you and delights you, as you take your way among these 
men, is the way in which the experiences of the camp confirm 
and strengthen and make like iron those characters which have 
hitherto largely had the shelter of the home and the nobler society 
of our country. One could speak by the hour to show it, but 
I want just simply, with all the emphasis there is in my soul, 
to repudiate the foul suggestions that our boys, taking them by 
and large, have no nobler conception of their duties to present 
their whole selves a gift to their country in the interest of the 
struggle which is now going on, than simply to deal loosely and 
easily with their own personal characters. 

Oh, how their character is growing! Just this morning, be- 
fore I came down here, there was one of our boys who is the son 
of a rich man and who has been trying to make a soldier of 
himself, but he has had so much ease, and things have been so 
soft, that I tell you what, his experiences at Fort Hamilton con- 
trast somewhat vividly with those which have hitherto been his 
own. He has had an easy position, but two or three days ago it 
was found necessary to "jack" our camp up from a military stand- 
point very severely, and he came to me this morning and said, 
"I think they have got it in for me. They have taken away my 
pass and they told me this morning that I must report for in- 
tensive duties at one of the batteries. I think they have got it in 
for me." "Well, my boy," said I, "I don't think they have ; they 
are just 'jacking' things up," and I said, "my boy, you have got 
the stuff in you. Now buck up." I looked him in the eye, and 
he was saying to me with his eyes, "I will buck, chaplain." I pre- 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 39 

sume I did more good that minute when I gave that simple ex- 
hortation to that boy than many a time when I have preached a 
sermon that permitted the saints to go to sleep and the sinners 
to snap their watches ! 

Six months ago a lady came to my study in relation to a 
member of her family. He was a young man who had had a col- 
lege education and had led a very proper life, but recently had 
adopted very radical views. This boy had lost his personal 
character as the result of the associations which had been his, 
and the new ideas which had been adopted, and she asked me 
what I would do. I didn't hear from her again until a week ago 
when I received an eight page letter in which there was a notice 
of his death. It didn't appeal to me at all — that notice of the 
death. In her letter this lady said, "You will remember me when 
I tell you I am the person who came to you six months ago to 
speak to you concerning my nephew about whom I was very 
much worried. After he enlisted there seemed to be a tremendous 
change in him. He not only abandoned the vicious habits which 
had got their hooks on him, but that for six weeks his family 
had had the greatest comfort and pride in him because of the 
new stand he had taken in regard to the things which were worth 
while. I wanted to tell you how glad we are and how grateful 
we are for the discipline of the camp life which transformed him 
from a thoughtless boy into an earnest, thinking and noble man." 

If anybody tries to make you believe that tommy rot that our 
boys are engaged in the groveling task of tearing down their 
characters in the camp, on shipboard or in the fort, you tell them 
it is a lie ; and you refer them to me, and I will either convince 
them or I will annihilate them. 

There is another thing that is happening to our boys, aside 
from the benefits which you will readily see, and that is, that our 
boys are finding a new use for their brains. People are beginning 
to say, "The world is being turned upside down, and what is the 
world going to be like when the boys come home?" They say 
our churches are going to be absolutely transformed. I don't 
know as that would hurt the churches very much. Being a Con- 
gregationalist myself, I know there is room for improvement in 
the Presbyterian church! 

This is the thing that is happening: Many of the boys have 
come into an arrangement of life, when, for the first time, they 
have been really challenged by a big ideal, and they are beginning 
to look upon it and they are beginning to think about it, and they 
find in that ideal, religion, patriotism, the things that are worthiest 
in life. They are asking themselves, "What is life for, anyway? 
[What is the use of living? How big a life can a man live, and 



40 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

how little a life does a man live ?" And those great fundamental 
questions are coming up. Well, the boys are thinking as they 
never thought before. We thought it was a joke two or three 
years ago, when that alumnus of one of our American colleges 
who was very fond of athletics and who heard that the college 
was jacking itself up in literary pursuits, sent word to his college 
and said he heard "they were trying to make the college a damned 
educational institution." 

Those of us who had generous fathers like myself, who paid 
all the bills and paid them promptly and cheerfully, didn't have 
very much to think about. The boys who got the most out of 
their college life were the ones who had to scratch for their daily 
food, etc. Those same boys are having the thoughts that 

"Wake to perish never, 

Which never man or boy 
Or anything that is utterly an enemy to joy 

Can utterly destroy." 

They are going to come back with a new impression with 
relation to the place that commerce holds in a man's life, with a 
new sense of the truth that republics, like individuals, only really 
secure the things they earn and for the sake of which they are 
willing to make the larger sacrifices. A good many of them have 
been like Mark Twain's lightning bug: 

"The lightning-bug is brilliant, 

But he hasn't any mind ; 
He goes glimmering through existence 

With his headlight on behind !" 

There are ten thousand of your sons that have got their head- 
lights in the right place, and it is inspiring clean through into 
the backbone. 

And then, there is just one thing more that I want to say about 
these boys, and that is, that a spirit of optimism pervades every 
camp and every fort that I know anything about, which is just 
as beautiful as it is brave. I don't talk to our boys much about 
eventualities. I never pass around to my boys the cards of the 
popular undertakers, or call their attention to the ambulance 
which now and then flits around even at Fort Hamilton. We 
trade on the good cheer of the boys. I wish you could hear them 
sing. Come down some time to any camp or any fort when the 
boys are having a song, and hear them pour out the great opti- 
mism of their bright natures, and when you hear them sing "And 
We Won't Come Back Till It's Over Over There," you will be 
feeling in your pockets to see if you have enough to get over 
there ! 



INSIDE OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 41 

We teach the boys that it is the business of life to live to-day 
in the full, with splendid symmetry and proportion, and that by 
making the best of every chance which To-day gives the boy to fit 
himself for to-morrow he can reach that symmetry; to let To- 
morrow take care of itself while he takes care of To-day. And 
we often quote to them that bit which rang in our ears when 
we were in the golden days of youth : 

"Happy the man, and happy he alone, 
He who can call to-day his own ; 
He who at night can calmly say, 
'To-morrow, do thy worst, 
For I have lived to-day !' " 

That is the kind of boys that we have in our American army, 
and all I have to say is, God pity the people that come up against 
them ! As I often say to my own boys, "Do your bit every day. 
Nobody knows but one member of our regiment may have the 
privilege of drawing the bead on the Kaiser, and if you do, I 
promise I will fulfill the burial service without a fee!" 



SECOND DISCUSSION 

JANUARY TWELFTH, I918 
OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 



ONE: BY HONORABLE WILLIAM S. KENYON 

United States Senator 

I am certainly glad to be here on this occasion, and when the 
Chairman announced, and perhaps unfortunately, for me, that 
I was a member of Congress, I heard some gentleman at my 
right suggest that you would try and overlook that this afternoon ! 

We have been glad, out in our middle west country, to have 
distinguished citizens of New York come out to arouse the 
patriotism of the Middle West. We really enjoy having them 
come, and when this invitation came to me, and the only vote 
against the resolution just passed in Congress for war upon 
Austria was cast by a Congressman from New York, I thought, 
in a spirit of reciprocity, I would come to New York from the 
Middle West and try and arouse the patriotism of New York. 

We like New York, out in our country, and there is one sight 
about New York I am never going to forget as long as I live. 
Two or three weeks ago I came back across the ocean. We were 
twelve days on the sea, and when we got to New York Harbor 
and saw that old Statute of Liberty, I felt like the Irishman who 
had gone over to visit Ireland after living in this country a while, 
and when he got back and they sailed up New York Harbor, he 
took off his hat to the Statue of Liberty and said, "Old lady, if 
you ever see me again, you have got to turn around." 

We have just passed through that season of "peace on earth 
and good will to men," and there never has been a time in the his- 
tory of the world when there was so little peace on earth and so 
much hatred among men as now. Over ten million men have 
gone to their death as the result of this war. Forty-five million 
are now probably under arms. This war is costing the world 
seventy-five million dollars a day, and in a few years, if it go 
on, it will run into the trillions. 

And yet, with these staggering figures, with the momentous 
problems which we are all facing as nations engaged in this con- 
test, it is no time for pessimism. Justice seems to have been a 
little delayed, but justice is on its road to triumph, and in this 
great cataclysm of the world, ideals are still holding their place, 

45 



46 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

and out of all the disappointments of the last year there is one 
inspirational event to the civilized world — the capture of Jerusa- 
lem from the atrocity-loving Turk, and the firm resolution on the 
part of humanity that it never shall be returned to the Turk. 

We have been a nation of peace. We did not bring on this 
war. America hated war. We wanted no territory additional 
to our own. We were contented and happy, and we were glad 
that the rest of the world could be contented and happy ; but we 
have learned as a nation that it does not take two to make a 
quarrel. Any powerful nation determined to do wrong can bring 
on a war, if the other nation to which they intend the wrong has 
any bit of red blood in it. Men had a right in this country, before 
this war started — and that is why some of you found fault with 
some parts of the Middle West — men had a right then to ques- 
tion the wisdom of going into the war; they had a right in 
Congress to vote against it, to talk against it ; but after the Consti- 
tutional authority in this nation had decreed there should be war, 
no man had a right then to say a thing or to do a single act that 
would injure his country in this crisis. 

And I believe that nearly every man in this country who did 
doubt the wisdom at that time of going into the war, not knowing 
things as they may have developed now, has accepted, however, 
the doctrine of old Stephen Decatur in his toast, "Our country, 
in her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be right, 
but our country, right or wrong." And many people in this country 
who doubted the wisdom of our step and who hesitated at the 
momentous step, with fuller knowledge of the great issues in- 
volved, have become thoroughly convinced that there was nothing 
else for America to do, and some who hesitated about going 
into the war hesitate just as strongly now to go out of it, until 
we accomplish the purpose for which we went into it. 

We could have waited a little longer; we could have gone on 
with our selfish, indulgent life, with our desire not to sacrifice 
anything. Yes, we could have given up our Monroe Doctrine; 
if we had wanted to, we could have given to Germany the con- 
trol of the sea, and said, "Yes, we will bow to you ; we will send 
one boat across the sea a week, painted like a barber's pole, be- 
cause you asked to have it done." We could have done that, but 
the time would have come eventually when we would have been 
forced into this contest. 

The President waited ; Congress waited ; people waited ; and I 
believe the President was wise in waiting, because in waiting, 
when we went into this war, he had a solid nation behind him. 

We could have avoided it on the same theory that a man can 
always keep out of a quarrel. If a man comes into your house 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 47 

and slaps and insults your wife, you don't have to have a quarrel 
with him. You can slink out of the room and out the back door, 
and then get down behind the woodshed like a craven coward, 
but that is not the American spirit. We reached a point where 
we had to fight or run, but the American people do not run, and I 
thank God that when we had to go into this conflict, we went 
into it with clean hands, and future historians will have so to 
record. 

When we get through with this job, as the Chairman has said, 
there are going to be some new principles of international law 
written. We didn't start this war. We didn't start this Angel of 
Death fiddling all over the world; but we propose now to have 
something to say about when the fiddling shall stop, and not turn 
over to the man who started the war the right to say what the 
peace terms shall be. 

And, in addition to these changes of international law strik- 
ing down the doctrine of force and the re-establishment of 
the doctrine of right, something else is going to come 
out of this war. The world is going to have a new concep- 
tion of American citizenship. You remember the old incident 
in the Bible — familiar, of course, to every one in a Republican 
Club, but I will call attention to it ! You remember when Paul 
was bound and he said to the centurion, "Is it lawful to scourge 
a man who is a Roman and uncondemned ?" And the centurion 
went to the captain of his host and said, "Take heed what thou 
doest, for this man is a Roman citizen." And so, when this war 
is over and any citizen of any nation, or any nation, attempts to do 
wrong to an American citizen where he has a right to be, he is 
going to hesitate and say, "Take heed what thou doest ; this man 
is an American citizen, protected by the power of the mightest 
nation on earth." 

True, we have our American issue, the killing of our Ameri- 
can people, closing to us the freedom of the seas, but that has 
grown out into a greater issue, a great world issue. It is hard 
sometimes for us to grasp, hard for us to visualize, a war three 
thousand miles away; but it is now a contest between these two 
great systems in the world, and you cannot have triumphant 
autocracy in Europe and flourishing democracy in this country. 
It isn't merely a question of making "the world safe for democ- 
racy." That is only half. It is a question of making this old 
world safe for humanity, and I have come to believe that you can- 
not make the world safe for humanity if the glorious old Anglo- 
Saxon race is to go down. 

In this struggle we meet a foe trained in the philosophy that 
God is a German God. I met a resident of your country (turn- 



48 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

ing to Doctor De Sadeleer of Belgium) — bless your little country; 
we are going to restore that when peace comes — and he said, 
"We pray to God and the Germans pray to God, and it looks as if 
God was a German God." One of the pieces of business that we 
have got on hand in this war is to dissolve this self-constituted 
partnership between the Kaiser and God, which God doesn't seem 
to know very much about. All through the teachings of the Ger- 
man philosophers and in the teachings of their ministers of the 
Gospel, runs this ; that Germany must rule the world. Her people 
had learned that ; they are ready, apparently, to give up their lives 
for that doctrine, and so the military power of Germany started 
out to "bluff" the world. A reign of terror and frightfulness, the 
like of which the world has never known, was started, but they 
might as well understand that, so far as Great Britain and France 
and the United States are concerned, they can't be "bluffed." 
Great Britain and the United States know a "bluff" when they see 
it, because they have tried to practice so many of them on one 
another in the days gone by. 

And we are not frightened by any of this talk about "the 
mailed fist." 

They have overrun Belgium in this reign of terror, and 
overrun Northern France. Oh, I am glad we can come to the 
help of Belgium; I am glad we can come to the help of France. 
When we were a little struggling nation, or trying to struggle 
into the family of nations, when we could hardly walk, we reached 
out our hands for help and who came? France. The people 
stood over at old Liberty Hall at Philadelphia and watched Ro- 
chambeau go by on his way to Washington. General Lafayette 
came too, ready to give his life. The bread that France cast on 
the waters one hundred years ago is coming back to them now. 

I happened to be in France when the boys of the Rainbow 
Division landed, that wonderful division, the boys from New 
York, boys from Iowa, from every State in the Union, a rainbow 
of hope, and a gentleman told me of seeing those troops at a 
certain port which I suppose cannot be mentioned for the censor- 
ship. He told me that people remained around there for a day 
or two, watching for the American troops. The boats finally came 
up the harbor with the American boys, and a band along the dock 
commenced to play "The Marsellaise." He said he saw a little 
French girl with her mother. She seemed very much agitated 
and she didn't seem to understand it. Finally she caught the 
word Americains. She seemed to grasp it, and reaching up and 
putting her arms around her mother's neck, said in French of 
course, the English of which would be "Oh, Mother, they have 
come to save us." I tell you, it is a great thing my friends, to 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 49 

have an opportunity to do some part in a work like that, and when 
this war is over, our relationship to France is so quite different, 
I think, from our relationship to other nations, close and intimate 
as they may be, when this war is over, I want us to say to France : 
"You came to us in our trouble. The great republic is not for- 
getful. We cancel every dollar of obligation of the money we 
have loaned you. We don't want you to give us back a single 
penny." That is what we ought to do to France. 

I went through Northern France a few weeks ago. I never 
imagined that there could be such wanton destruction. Towns 
blown up, not for military purposes, but out of pure deviltry; 
cathedrals destroyed, on the walls of some of the different cathe- 
drals written "With the love of your enemies" and "Rage not but 
wonder." At Albert a cathedral with a statue of the Madonna, 
a magnificent cathedral, was shelled, so that this statue is at right 
angles from the steeple, holding out the little Child Jesus over the 
city. The Madonna was not safe, and I suppose as these cathe- 
drals were shelled, that the Kaiser wired to his armies, "On with 
God." The blasphemy of all the miserable business ! Cities that 
had populations of eight or ten thousand people now with only 
two or three hundred. Half an hour to get out of town and take 
no horses. And yet Count von Hertling, who is now engaged in 
bringing about a German peace, said in an address a few weeks 
ago that they, the Germans, were saving Europe from America ! 
Saving Europe from America ! Oh, what are they saving it for ? 

They have shelled defenceless women and children in the 
towns ; they have shelled Red Cross hospitals ; — and I am going 
to indulge in no hysterical statements ; nothing but what I could 
prove ; — hospital ships sent down to the bottom with poor, weak, 
struggling men thereon, even then struggling for their lives. 
They have taken the women and children of Belgium and France, 
as you know, and put them in front of their armies in their 
charges on the French. They have taken girls away for worse 
than bondage ; they have poisoned wells ; they have cut down fruit 
trees. I saw hundreds of them just cut down, for no military 
purpose. Even in the gardens of the peasants, the little rose 
bushes were destroyed. I tell you, gentlemen, whether you are 
from the East or from the West, I bring this message to you from 
the manhood of the West; before we are willing that these things 
shall come to our country, we stand shoulder to shoulder with you 
in the resolution that we had better die, every one of us, and we 
will die, before we will ever permit it to come to America. 

One man is responsible for all this, one man with his 
palaces, with his six bomb-proof sons ; for it was amazing to me 
when I inquired down on the battlefield of the Marne where the 



50 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Crown Prince was, and over at Verdun, he was always safely in 
the rear ! There is one family in Germany that hasn't lost a single 
soul, and that is the Kaiser's family. Some Belgian woman, 
chided by a German soldier about having no land, replied, "I had 
rather have a king who has lost his country, than an emperor who 
has lost his soul." And this is the gentleman who is now trying, 
by the most skillful intrigue, to bring about peace in the world. 
Is America going to nibble at his bait ? 

A.ustria and Germany are in a conspiracy against freedom. 
Turkey is their partner. We ought to declare war on Turkey 
also, unless there is some mighty good reason for doing otherwise, 
and there may be. 

In all of this, what do they expect of America? I cut out of 
the paper, coming over last night, the words of Churchill of yes- 
terday or the day before: "America, come and aid us with all 
your might and speed, for this is the time for action on the largest 
scale ever planned." They are counting on us. That was im- 
pressed on me one Sunday evening. We were below St. Quentin, 
in the third trench, where there was a concealed battery, and a 
little French fellow in there who could speak English, said, "We 
are driving the boches out fast ; but when you folks get here, we 
are going to drive them out faster." Those people of France 
seem to regard us as a poor, weak sister would regard a great 
big brother coming to save her. We must not fail. 

Ships, ships, ships; that is the great need, the tremendous 
problem of getting our men and munitions and supplies across 
the water. It is a tremendous problem, and we will get those 
ships quickly, in my judgment, if all of the quarreling and 
wrangling and arguing is done away and all the red tape is cut at 
Washington, and we just get down to plain, common, horse-sense 
business, and build the ships. 

The saddest words that this nation will ever write, if we do 
not hasten, will be the words, "Too Late." Do you remember 
when the Saviour was in the Garden of Gethsemane and his 
disciples slept ? Coming back again and again and finding them 
asleep, the Saviour finally said, "Sleep on now. It is too late." 
England was nearly too late. If it had not been for the construc- 
tive genius, the courage and the dynamic force of one man in 
England, she probably would have been too late. That man is 
the best loved man on the Continent of Europe among the Allies, 
the splendid Premier of England, Lloyd George. 

There never has been a war where there was such correla- 
tion and the necessity of such correlation of forces. Artillery 
and airplanes are going to win this war. Infantry is nearly 
powerless without the artillery ; the artillery can do but little with- 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 51 

out the airplane. At a certain place near Vimy Ridge there was 
a great gun. I saw it in operation, down under the hill. Over 
the hill, about four miles away were the German lines. The day 
before — they told us the operation of that gun, and I tell it be- 
cause it shows the necessity of airplanes — there were airplanes 
hovering over the hill. A battery over at the German lines had 
been doing great destruction. This gun was to put that battery 
out of business. That was its business. The first shot was fired, 
and the airplane wired back to the gunners, "Two kilometers too 
far." At the next shot the wireless came back, "One kilometer 
too short." The next shot hit square on the battery and wiped 
it out of existence. Without the airplane it could not have been 
done. Airplanes are what we need over there, with big cannon. 
Ten thousand airplanes starting on a trip to Berlin from behind 
the lines would come mighty near nailing the stars and stripes to 
the flag-pole of the Kaiser. 

And I don't know how you feel about it ; I did not have much 
heart for retaliation, but after seeing the terror and death caused 
in London by air raids, the one I saw resulting in the death of 
one poor man and his wife and their six children and nothing 
else, I became somewhat of a convert to the doctrine of retaliation. 
You can't justify on our part or the Allies' part going out and 
killing defenseless women and children. It seems a dreadful 
thing to do. There is only one theory on which our conscience 
can be at ease about it, and that is this, it is the only way to stop 
the ruthless bombardment from the skies of women and children 
of the Allies, and under that theory we would be justified in doing 
what we could to protect our own women and children. 

I want to relate to you an incident that was rather pleasing 
to me at Vimy Ridge which was captured just as we declared 
war. Up the hill went those Canadians in two hours and cap- 
tured Vimy Ridge ; but among those Canadians there were nine 
thousand American boys. And one of the first flags to be planted 
on Vimy Ridge right after we declared war was the stars and 
stripes carried by a long, lanky fellow from Texas. 

You hear a good deal to the effect that we have done nothing 
in this war, that we do more talking than we do acting; but I 
say to you that the feats of the American Navy are worthy the 
best traditions of our Navy. In all the criticism that has gone on, 
there has been no criticism of the American Navy. And when 
you travel through the submarine zone and wake up some morn- 
ing to see a little destroyer on each side of your boat with the flag 
of your country flying, it is the best sight you ever saw in this 
world. 

Those American destroyers have adopted new tactics. The 



52 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

captain of a great ocean liner told me that within three days after 
they arrived over there, you could notice the difference in the sub- 
marine activities. They do not circle, as the British and French 
have been doing, around the submarine. No ; when they see one, 
they go straight to it. Dangerous ? Yes, but that is the Ameri- 
can way. They are so skillful they can almost dodge the tor- 
pedoes. And they ram the submarine if they get the chance, 
bobbing over the waves of the sea, straight for it. They have 
put the fear of God into the hearts of the German commanders of 
the submarines, and when the story of this war is told, we shall 
find that the American Navy has done splendid work, and there 
will be hundreds of these boys of the sea who stood with their 
guns all night on these merchant boats, cold and wet. We will 
know of them on the destroyers, with hardly a chance to rest and 
never a chance to sit down, they will be some of the great un- 
known, unnamed heroes of this war. 

It is no time for gloom. It is no time to think that things are 
running against us, because they are not. It took England two 
years to get on a substantial war basis. It is going to take some 
time to evolve a great peace nation into a war nation, but in the 
future we will never be found in such a condition of unprepared- 
ness as we were when this war started, and I believe that one of 
the best ways to be ready for future troubles will be to have 
universal military training. 

There isn't any trouble with the patriotism of our nation. 
Don't you Eastern people get it in your minds that there is any 
trouble with the patriotism of the Middle West. It is a'bout time 
for the East and the West to stop making faces at each other and 
lock arms in this contest. There isn't any more patriotism in one 
section of this country than there is in the other. It is the old 
American patriotism that will always come to the front. We 
found it in the days of '61 and it is here now ; the same patriotism 
that was with Grant at Shiloh and at Vicksburg; the same pa- 
triotism that was with old Pat Thomas at Chickamauga and that 
followed Joe Hooker above the clouds until the stars of the old 
flag twinkled side by side with the stars of the heavens. It is the 
same patriotism that was with Hancock on those immortal days 
at Gettysburg ; with Farragut at Mobile, damning the torpedoes ; 
and with Dewey destroying the Spanish fleet at Manila harbor. 
There isn't any trouble with the patriotism of the American 
people. 

Great things are going to come to this country out of this war. 
We are going to be stronger and better. We are going to be less 
selfish, we are going to grow great by sacrifice. Oh, we must 
learn that lesson of sacrifice. They are sacrificing over there. 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 53 

France has given two and a half million of her men. You can 
ride along the Somme and see fifteen miles of graves on either 
side. You can ride up the hill at Verdun and see a great ceme- 
tery ; and at the Marne I stood and looked over that scene, palms 
above the French graves, side by side with the German graves, 
a great sea of waving palms. 

They have stood the test. They have sacrificed. In England 
you will find the women in the munition factories the same as in 
France. I visited one in England where five thousand women 
were working; and another in France where fifteen thousand 
women were working, cheery and singing about their work. 

I want to tell you a little incident. It illustrates the character 
of these British people. Ambassador Page told me that when he 
had charge of matters there, and I want to say in passing that 
Ambassador Page is an honor to this country and one of the best 
loved men in England, that the British women used to come and 
inquire about their boys, he having charge of such affairs, and he 
said sometimes he would have to say the boy was gone ; some- 
times he was a prisoner, and that woman, that mother, would 
walk out of his office without a tear in her eye. That is the kind 
of spirit of the women of England. 

There is the same kind of spirit in America. They are sacri- 
ficing. They are .getting along without as much to eat, probably 
as they should have. There is a gloom over their country, natur- 
ally; but there is no desire on their part ever to stop until this 
matter is settled right. 

We have got to sacrifice, save on our foodstuffs, think a little 
less about self and get to thinking, each one of us, about our na- 
tion, — forget ourselves. Patriotism in this country does not con- 
sist in attending banquets of seven and eight courses in order to 
discuss food conservation, or in rising when the orchestra plays 
the "Star Spangled Banner," and then telegraphing your Con- 
gressman at Washington, "For God's sake, don't tax anything in 
which we are interested." We have got to learn what sacrifice 
means, and we are going to do it. And out of this war there are 
coming great things for our country, though the price we pay will 
be heavy. But when it is all over, we are going to have a citizen- 
ship here that means something. We are going to have no more 
hyphenated Americanism in this country. If there are those in 
our country who care more for some other country than they 
do for this, they ought to be escorted to that country at once, and 
the sooner the better. 

I was told of a condition the other day that existed in eight 
or nine States of this Union, where men can vote for electors 
who in turn select the President, when these voters are not citi- 



54 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

zens of the United States, and we have a sample out in Indiana 
of some man elected mayor of a city out there, who has to get 
some kind of a pass as an alien enemy to get to certain parts of 
Indiana! Men who have come to this country and accumulated 
great properties — some of them have accumulated farms in my 
State — men who have been here for five years and have accumu- 
lated these properties, who evidence no intention to become citi- 
zens of the United States ought to be compelled to leave the 
country. 

It is no time, my friends, for partisanship in this nation. We 
don't have it at Washington. I see a distinguished Senator 
from your State here, one of the hardest working members of 
the American Senate. I see him, like nearly all the other Sena- 
tors, standing squarely behind all of the war preparations, re- 
gardless of whether the bill comes from the Democratic side or 
from the Republican side. 

And it is not a time, either, in this country for incompetency. 
It is not a time to stifle criticism. Honest criticism of the gov- 
ernment is helpful, and at Washington now there are going on 
investigations some of which are helpful. The people of this 
country are entitled to know how their money is being spent and 
that a public dollar is going as far as a private dollar. We are 
submitting to meatless days and wheatless days and sweetless 
days in our homes. I insist that we shall have porkless days in the 
American Congress. And inefficiency, wherever it may be, 
whether it be in Congress or in the heads of Bureaus or in the 
Cabinet of the nation, inefficiency should go. 

And in these days of non-partisanship which we Republicans 
are practicing, and I think most of our Democratic friends are 
too (I never dare say anything against a Democrat, because I 
married one of them and I have learned never to argue with a 
Democrat!), but in these days, how reassuring it would be to the 
people of this nation, how it would arouse the patriotic fervor 
of the whole nation, if we could in this spirit of non-partisanship, 
have a coalition Cabinet. Suppose we could have, suppose New 
York could have two members of the Cabinet, and I suppose 
they are always willing to take them, but if we could have in the 
Cabinet of the nation Elihu Root and Theodore Roosevelt — I see 
Roosevelt is nearly as popular in New York as he is in Iowa — 
and if in some of these missions abroad, we could have utilized 
the services of such a magnificent American as William Howard 
Taf t ! We need some Republican brains in running this country, 
just as well as all Democratic brains, although I am not finding 
fault with the Democratic brains. 

This non-partisanship, putting our country above our party, 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 55 

has characterized the action of the Republican members of the 
American Congress and I am glad of that, and most of the Demo- 
cratic members, too. 

If it were not for the little bits of humor that creep up now 
and then, the whole European continent would be one great cloud 
of gloom; but some of the humorous things you see are rather 
pleasing, although it is hard to get in a humorous frame of mind 
in this serious time of the world's history. They have a lot of 
Chinamen over there, and the first night some of the Chinamen 
were working at a great English storehouse it was bombarded and 
a lot of the Chinamen went out and climbed the trees in order to 
be safe, and some of the Chinamen went and protested that this 
bombing business was not in their contract ! 

They dropped some bombs on a camp of German prisoners, 
and these prisoners insisted that the British send a protest to Ger- 
many against bombing them ! And one old English Major, telling 
me about the experiences of his captain, said, "There is a won- 
derful spirit in those Tommies. Three or four of us went over 
the top. They were not expecting us. They were in their dug- 
outs. They go from the trenches into the dug-outs and sleep 
there. Our captain went alone into one of those dug-outs and 
brought five of those beggars out as prisoners. That is jolly good 
work, don't you know." And another of those English soldiers 
was in the hospital all torn to pieces, and when he came to, the 
nurse asked him "How did this happen?" ''Well," he said, "we 
had come out of the trenches. We had been in all day and all 
night, penned up, and we thought we were going to get a good 
dinner. The captain came along and said, 'Get right back there/ 
'Oh,' but they said, 'we want the dinner.' The captain said, 
'You don't need any dinner. You will all be dead inside of thirty 
minutes, anyhow/ And we all were, including the blooming 
optimist." 

I want to just suggest another thing, and I may be wrong 
about this proposition, but it is something we ought to think 
about. I wish we could, somehow or other, get this thought un- 
der the German skull — perhaps it will take a surgical operation to 
do it — that when this war is over, if they keep on waging war 
contrary to all rules of war and humanity, if they keep up this 
cruelty, that the world, the civilized part of it, after the war, will 
absolutely refuse to trade with Germany. We ought to organize 
the financial powers of this Western Continent and send our Am- 
bassadors to South America, in order to carry out that plan, be- 
cause if you can get that into the brains of the ruling classes 
of Germany and into the heads of their great financiers and 
merchants, it will do more to end this war than anything else. 



56 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

A man told me on the boat, a Jewish friend of mine, that he 
had a friend over in Germany engaged in business, a Jewish mer- 
chant. He said this merchant went to a member of the ruling 
classes of Germany and said, "You must stop this submarine 
business. Why," he said, "every time you sink a boat you lose 
a customer." But if they ever get this notion into their heads, it 
will do a good deal to end this war, and if this keeps up, who is 
going to buy German goods after the war ? We have had no envy 
of Germany and its great commercial success, not at all. But we 
will refuse — I believe people will refuse for a hundred years to 
come, at least for our generation, to buy German-made goods. 

A state senator came down to Washington from my state. 
He told me he had a pencil marked "Made in Germany." He was 
a pretty prosperous fellow, so he was staying at the New Wil- 
lard (unless he goes around and eats his breakfast at Childs; one 
has to be pretty prosperous to stay there). The pencil was 
marked "Made in Germany." He cut that off before he went to 
bed, and he said in the night he got to thinking about it, and he 
got up and threw that pencil out of the window. 

Who wants in their homes any goods made by the hands that 
have bayoneted women and children, that have dropped bombs 
on defenseless women and children, that have manned the German 
submarine, sending men, women and children to their death with- 
out a chance for their lives? Who wants to buy any of those 
things? Let them take their goods and go to Hell with them. 
That is where they belong. For the Devil certainly, in a spirit 
of kindness and reciprocity, ought to appoint the Kaiser the Chief 
of his staff. He has out-deviled the Devil in cruelty. 

We hear a lot about peace in this country, and that is what 
I want to talk about for a minute. I was not one of those who 
was anxious to get into this war. I hoped we might keep out, but 
I am just as insistent now that we make no peace terms until we 
have gone through with this thing to a finish that will mean 
a permanent peace. 

The Kaiser is constantly quoting Scripture for his purposes. 
And I have a little Scripture here that I jotted down, that I want 
to commend to him on this peace question. You are all familiar 
with it, but at the same time I will read it. From Isaiah : "The 
way of peace they know not, and there is no judgment in their 
goings. They have made them crooked paths. Whosoever goeth 
therein shall not know peace." And from Romans : "Their throat 
is an open sepulchre. With their tongues they have used deceit. 
The poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of 
cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. 
Destruction and misery are in their ways and the way of peace 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 57 

have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." 
From Ezekiel: "Destruction cometh and they shall seek peace 
and there shall be none." 

Yes, we want peace, of course. Every one would like to have 
this slaughter stopped, but what is the use of a patched-up peace 
that will simply compel us to go through this thing again in a 
few years? What is the use of a peace unless it is a peace of 
righteousness? When the Kaiser takes his bloody hands off 
Belgium and France, it will be time enough then to talk about 
peace. 

We have started out plowing the furrow that we will have 
nothing to do with the reigning rulers of Germany. You can't 
trust them. They are not on the square. A peace with them 
amounts to nothing. They care not for treaties. Their word is 
good for naught. We have declared that we will do business 
with the people of Germany and not with this murderous ruling 
class. Let us plow jthat furrow straight out to the end and it 
will bear fruit. 

Peace ? Yes, I should think the Kaiser would want peace. It 
has been suggested that before the civilized nations of the world 
make peace with Germany, that they turn over the Kaiser to a jury 
of the civilized world, to be tried for all the murders and rapes 
that he has brought to the world. Would you sit down and make 
peace with the man who had murdered your family ? You might 
say, "Oh, it is going to cost the life of a sheriff or so to take the 
man, and so rather than do that we will sit down and talk about 
peace." No red-blooded man would do it. The Kaiser is a mur- 
derer, and a murderer in the first degree ; and everywhere in the 
world murder in the first degree is punishable by death. A mil- 
lion deaths would not punish him for what he has brought to the 
world, but there is only one death that can be administered to him. 

In traveling across the sea a few weeks ago, and witnessing 
the terrible submarine peril, I wished that before we talked much 
about peace the Kaiser could be compelled to traverse the sea in 
an unprotected boat, with the submarines peppering away at him 
every now and then. In witnessing an air raid on London, I 
wished that the Kaiser could be compelled to stand where poor 
working girls and women were compelled to stand, and let these 
bombs drop all around him. And seeing those ruined cities in 
France, I wished that the palaces of the Kaiser might be blown 
up in like fashion. Seeing those poor boys in the trenches in the 
cold and in the rain, I wished that he might be compelled to stand 
there with the bombs falling on him and hand-grenades and ma- 
chine guns spitting at him, and see how he liked the ruthlessness 
that he had brought to this old world. Let us be a little careful, 



58 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

my friends, about this peace talk. That propaganda went through 
Italy, and has been tried in France. It will be tried in this coun- 
try. Nothing can help the cause of our enemies more at this time 
than to talk about peace. I don't mean by that that we should 
not have a righteous peace. But I don't believe you can get a 
permanent peace until the day comes that we can substantially 
demand the disarmament of the great military power of Germany, 
and that will bring a permanent peace. 

Oh yes, we want peace, righteous peace. We want a peace in 
this country now that passeth understanding. It is peace of mind ; 
it is a peace that comes from the rising consciousness of America. 
It is the peace that we feel because we know that we are fighting 
for worth-while things, for a worth-while civilization, a civiliza- 
tion based upon justice and not upon greed, and with that peace 
of our souls and our spirits, which the ruling powers of Germany 
understand not but will soon understand, we fight on. 

America knows the issue in this war. We may have been a 
little while comprehending it, but we have it now. We know, 
as we knew in '61, that this nation of ours could not be half slave 
and half free, so we know now that this world of which we are a 
part and cannot escape, cannot be half cruelly autocratic and 
half humanely democratic. The American people know that 
righteousness must either rule in this world, or ruthlessness. 
They are ready to make the sacrifice. Loyalty, sacrifice, efficiency, 
will win this war, and I rejoice that in this great duty, hard as it 
is, that God has placed upon us, the American people are firm. 
They are united ; no East or West or North or South ; a united 
nation, marching to the music of humanity ; a people who cannot 
be beguiled by false peace projects born of German intrigue; a 
people determined that they will have nothing to do with the mur- 
derous Hohenzollern family; who know that such a peace would 
be a farce to be broken in a few years. That people, devoted 
to peace, with the highest ideals of liberty and the greatest love 
of humanity that any nation has ever known, that people are will- 
ing, if necessary, to die that men may be free ; and believing that, 
hard as it is, with determination they war on, their faces fully 
to the light. 

"In the beauty of the lilies 

Christ was born across the sea; 

With a glory in his bosom 
That transfigures you and me. 

As he died to make men holy 
Let us die to make men free, 

While God is marching on. 

As He died to make men holy, 
We must die to make men free, 

While God is marching on." 



'WO 



f 

/ 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 59 



BY REVEREND S. PARKES CADMAN, D.D. 



I do not know why I was asked to come here and speak, for 
men of my cloth are generally sent for only in cases of emergency ! 
I have always felt a rather strongly rooted objection to ministers^ 
in politics, because, as a rule, they display the ragged edges of the,; 1 
amateur. And again, after such an admirable and eloquent ad- 
dress as that of Senator Kenyon, I don't see why I should be 
brought here this afternoon, to add to the embarrassment of your 
riches. It was said of a friend of mine who was a speaker of 
the first grade, that his only fault was that his arguments were 
so abundant that you could not see the wood for the trees, and I 
am afraid that may be the case this afternoon. 

I feel very much like the Irish mother who was asked by her 
son, "Mother, what is the difference between hope and expecta- 
tion?" "Well, Pat," said she, "I hope to see your father in 
Heaven, but I never expect to see him there." What hopes I 
may have indulged have been taken captive by this mighty man 
from the middle west; what expectations you may have had in 
me have been shriveled up ! 

This crisis should take us out of our usual being, and if it has 
not done this, we are still living on the surface and in an im- 
poverished way. Even those emotional displays which I have 
seen this afternoon may be nothing more than sporadic senti- 
mentality, the last result of which is demoralization. You cannot 
play fast and loose with great virtues. If you do not accept them 
seriously, they are prone to become devouring flames. 

There is in a country likp our own a tendency, — and this springs 
both from its past and from its temperament — -a constitutional 
tendency towards an irrational optimism, which should be cor- 
rected, even if by our enemies. For the last forty years some of 
the best brains of Europe have been polluting themselves in per- 
petrating this tragedy on the race, and they have now done it with 
a thoroughness which leaves little to be desired on the part of the 
forces of evil and anarchy. I have often wondered how long we 
should suffer from those penis of peace, which are not less re- 
nowned, if you rightly undersTahoTtirem, than are the perils of 
war. The gradual reduction of the essentials of manhood; the 
weakening spirit of compromise ; the attempt to make settlements 
of situations by minimizing their moral issues or camouflaging 
them with false names ; the worship of the god of comfort, and the 
keeping of conscience as a pet cat by the fireside instead of as a 
useful animal chasing the vermin out of the cellar, are enervating 



60 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

pursuits for the children of democracy. And what is more, — I am 
not asking here for the impossible out of human clay, since we 
cannot evoke the impossible — it is very seldom that you find a man 
whose life center is not selfish. Even so lofty a genius as that 
of Lincoln who was, by all odds, the greatest spirit that has been 
produced on this continent, had its flaws ; and what he might have 
been but for the baptism of his early years of discipline, none 
of us can foresee. The Civil War created what I may call the 
virtuous element of your own party, which after the war, was 
in peril of falling asunder for lack of vital principles to give it 
steering gear, and that is true of all parties, more or less, and 
will always be true. 
*p When Socrates, a great authority, asserted that knowledge 
was virtue, he said what was not true. If it were true, there 
would be transformations, not only at Washington, but every- 
where. It is not for lack of knowledge that nations perish ; it is 
for lack of strength to realize the ideals which they fully 
recognize. So history teaches, and so it seems to me will ever 
be the case. It is not a question of money winning the war, al- 
though I freely concede to you the importance of it. If money 
would win the war, we could safely leave it to our financial 
princes. 

If mere intellectualism would win this war, I undertake to 
say to you there is enough of it concentrated in the thousands of 
our intellectual giants to prove invincible. But, gentlemen, 
neither money nor intellectualism, in the last analysis, is sufficient 
to guide this war to victory, or dictate the terms of peace. What 
I regret in publicists and statesmen is that they do not reflect 
on this situation. They are always too mundane, afraid of the 
altitudes. Their lungs seem incapable of standing the pressure 
of the higher atmospheres. 

If you believe in God at all you must realize that He is in this 
war, and that this is not a rogue-proof or a fool-proof universe 
in which you can violate the sovereign dictates Revelation has 
made known to men, and then escape the inevitable consequence. 
Whenever a historian sits down to write the story of a war like 
this he is bound to take the longitudinal view. He looks behind 
the Kaiser and behind the present staff which probably has been 
ruling the Kaiser, and if he has foresight, he sees professors in 
their classrooms, ministers in their pulpits, and graduates in their 
studies, mapping out this course of criminality and barbarism. 

That is where the importance of my calling comes in for good 
or evil. It always comes in for good, gentlemen, if a man has the 
power to elevate it to a true prophecy of God's will. When every 
other man has finished ; when even the doctor has done his worst, 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 61 

then we appear, and what could one do better than go back to the 
great preachers of Israel of three thousand years ago? We are 
thrown back upon them by sheer necessity of the basic wisdom 
which yet proclaims the Jehovah of all righteousness to Whom 
our fathers in the day of their extremity appealed, and did not 
appeal in vain. 

That being granted, let me add another thought which is this : 
that we have been mistaken in the past, and very much so, by 
placing our emphasis upon the extensive aspects of any policy. 
Bulk is no criterion of quality, and we have been led astray 
by its vulgarity. If there is any word in the English language 
which I would give well earned vacation, it is the word "great," 
that India-rubber term which means a different thing in 
every man's mouth, and is so difficult to define and so easy to 
apply. The historian has little to do but withdraw it from most 
things and men to whom it has been applied in the past and give 
it a new setting in men and things. There is no use in your rear- 
ing statues in the market place for parochial heroes who perish 
speedily. Time always tears them down. And so it is with ficti- 
tious greatness in this world. If it is mere size and wealth which 
makes a country invincible in the day of battle, why did Athens 
conquer Persia when she was not as big as Jersey City, and give 
us Pericles, and Demosthenes and Socrates and a hundred others 
whose names shine forever ? 

I do not hesitate to say that if Germany were taken out of 
this alliance opposed to us, the rest would roll up like tissue paper 
in three months. Germany's strength does not exist in her seventy 
million, nor in her Kaiserdom. Germany's strength consists in 
the wide and deep conviction of a national purpose and the con- 
sciousness, which, however mistaken it may be, has all the inten- 
sity of a zealot; not to recognize this is to go against an enemy 
underestimating him, and he who underestimates his enemy is 
liable to be rudely awakened from his dreams. 

What is the case with those who are aligned upon our side? 
There is a residual saving element in Britain, and a very great ele- 
ment — in fact, I speak from the card when I tell you that Britain, 
no less resolute than ourselves, will never relinquish this business 
until the rape of Belgium is redeemed. France, as the princess 
of Latin civilization, so different and so much more beautiful than 
our own, has her deserved place she will occupy among the pre- 
mier nations of mankind, without any further interference from 
that gross and wanton brutality which has always characterized 
the Teutonic type, whether in this present city of ours or else- 
where on the face of the earth. 

For nations, gentlemen, are like a symphony, and as you 



62 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

know, every instrument blends in the interweaving and cor- 
relations of the music. God made them differently, but He in- 
tended that their unison should produce a symphony of praise 
and service, not because all are alike, a dreadful monotony, but 
because they do differ just as different notes on an instrument 
differ and yet together strike the same chord. 

What party on earth has ever identified itself with that prin- 
ciple more completely than has the Republican Party which was 
the backbone of the resistance in this nation to undue discrimina- 
tion against a different race from that of the white man? You 
professed and believed and still believe that the fact of a man's 
freedom should not depend on the color of his skin or where he 
was born under the heavens of God. 

In Britain to-day there has been a fixed resolution. She has 
never been able to secure the favorable verdict of Americans, 
simply for lack of manners. To be perfectly frank, that has 
been the standing trouble, a lack of manners. If I were to hint 
that the lack has not been all on one side, I should be just to the 
situation. And yet, gentlemen, a sense of solemn glory environs 
us like an atmosphere when we reflect upon the past of Britain. 
From Alfred the Great £o the present ruler, can you find anything 
in the history of mankind comparable with the story of this little 
island? If Germany's hopes were fulfilled and there was nothing 
left of Britain; if she were completely swallowed up in the sea 
and the keels of a victorious German fleet moved through the 
ocean which rolled over what was once Britain, you could never, 
in the spiritual evolution of the race, destroy the vast and ever 
accumulating contribution which men like Shakespeare and John 
Milton and Newton and Pitt and a thousand other heroes of Eng- 
land have made to the advancement and the blessing of man- 
kind. 

I get letters occasionally from a highly placed official on the 
other side, and I think I know somewhat of the inner mind, 
not only of the rulers of Britain, which is very important, but 
of her working man, which is far more important at the present 
stage of the game. Let me tell you that the same convictions 
which have thrilled this audience to-day are to be found in the 
minds of the men and women on the other side, irrespective of 
rank or condition. You will find them in Ireland also, which has 
contributed a hundred and fifty thousand men to the ranks of 
those who are fighting in the front trenches in Flanders. 

Wherein are we weakest? Simply in the fact that we are 
separated. Not because we are geographically separated, for east 
and west or middle west make no difference. My brother is my 
brother, though at the farthest pole. How are we brothers ? Not 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 63 

by measurement, nor even by consanguinity of blood, but by 
identity of ideals. That is what makes brotherhood. 

Let me say in preface to that, that there is no necessary virtue 
in democracy, except what you put in it. It has no divine right, 
except as we make it to be of the divine. We sometimes speak 
of it with bated breath, as though the word had a hereditary force. 
Not at all. It is the breasts of free men which make the strength 
of democracy, and unless it is farsighted, moral, sagacious, it will 
be crushed in the present emergency. It does not travel by its own 
motion. So let us dismiss delusions about democracy ; let us cease 
speaking of it as though it were something in itself of royal 
privilege. And then as to its righteousness, has there been the 
exploitation of foreign aliens? I don't wish to plead for mere 
parochialism, for I am an immigrant myself, and assuredly I have voJ 4 ***^ 
no desire to "shut the gates of mercy on mankind." But so far asp ; 
the doors of this country are concerned, we have too often taken 
them off the hinges, too often for solely economic and selfish 
reasons. There is a justice which holds the scales of the nations 
with unfaltering hands. It never for a moment varies from its 
great motions. And those which vary from it, even though they 
are called wise, are really beating the air. 

The Bismarckian policy of blood and iron and might on the 
other side as contrasted with the policy of Gladstone were policies 
the relative merits of which we used fiercely to argue when I was 
a student. Gladstone, with all his drawbacks, was yet able to 
democratize an empire and helped to create a united Italy and a 
free Greece, yet notwithstanding, the critics of the moment poured 
scorn on Gladstone. Now this doctrine of Bismarck is toppling 
over, and the empire he built with the sword has aroused the 
wrath of every liberty-loving man throughout the world. 

So far as our democracy is concerned, it does not pay to make 
short cuts to mercenary ends at the expense of justice and of 
right, since men always come back from an interview with God's 
justice severely mulcted if they are in the opposition. I am simply 
one of His ambassadors, sustained by your generosity, but I trust 
I am one of His ambassadors, and as such, I urge that true ex- 
pediency considers first His laws. 
/ There is a time in the history of men and nations when we 
have to speak the word of prophecy or perish by the way. In 
this dearly loved land of ours, baptized in the blood of the fathers ; 
and where men once dwelt with high visions of everlasting issues, 
/ you have the lotus lover, who, at the very thought of sacrifice, 
^ shivers in his soul. So there comes to him and to all, the stern 
regimen of war. It finds that, instead of being the "melting pot," 
we are in danger of becoming a garbage pail. There are a great 



64 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

many unredeemed portions at the bottom of that famous pot yet. 
Thank God! there are not so many as there were some months 

I remember some years ago meeting a titled personage. It is 
not often you meet a senator or a duke. The Senator replies 
that he has met no dukes. Well, I have met a noble on the other 
side, and he said to me with some emphasis, "Doctor Cadman, 
how much longer are you going to take the risks of democracy?" 
Said I, "Just as long as you take the risks of aristocracy." Said 
he, "What do you mean ?" "Well," said I, "you suck the orange 
at one end and we suck it at wherever there is juice. We often 
register folly in our votes, and the intelligent American never puts 
too much faith in a majority, even though he may greatly desire 
it for personal and political reasons. But when everything has 
been said and done, we prefer our position and its risks to those 
of autocratic and monopolistic government." Said he, "You 
don't really believe in democracy in America." "Why not?" said 
I. "Well," said he, "there are people in New York who will 
marry their daughters to anybody with a title." Said I, "They 
are not Americans." "Yes," said he, "they are Americans, they 
were born here." "Oh, no," said I, "they are not Americans 
simply because they were born here, any more than kittens are 
biscuits just because they happen to be born in the oven." "Well," 
said the duke, at last, "what is an American ?" "America," I re- 
plied, "is a big boiling pot of human experiment in which have 
been precipitated thirty million who would not let you people 
govern them or whom you could not govern. When the scum 
comes to the top we throw that back to you and the residuum 
goes on boiling and bubbling." 

And yet, as you very well know, it is difficult for 
us to create a common consciousness at any time, and I speak 
with all sympathy for those who hark back to the German Father- 
land of happier days. 

There are many here who love music and love philosophy and 
the enterprises of the human mind that give it dignity, who do not 
for a moment ignore the debt we owe to the Germany of the past. 
And when you find among the men of German descent those who 
are hostile to the Germany of to-day, those who desire to make 
our principles theirs and by them live and die, they are worthy 
of double honor. There has been considerable progress in that 
direction since we first began our mission, that is, from April 
first of last year, and during that time I have had the pleasure 
of addressing audiences in not less than sixteen different States, 
and sometimes, in the case of soldiers, audiences numbering 
thousands, and I have found everywhere a response to the leader- 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 05 

ship which is being given to our people by President Wilson's 
unequalled addresses, and by the magnificent addresses of Mr. 
Root, who speaks all too little for the good of the United States. 
The sterling manhood and foresightedness of Colonel Roosevelt 
have been of great assistance to us in this time. 

You have heard in the case of Senator Kenyon what is the 
voice of the Middle West, and you have heard from our own 
Senator Calder as to the voice of this great State and city. 

So far as the pacifism is concerned with which my calling is\ f k C) *\ 
so often confused, let me tell you that it never represented the 
clergy of any church or denomination. I know at least five thou- 
sand rabbis and priests and ministers who never recognize the 
proposition that "democracy cannot be safe unless it is helpless." 

We have had men in high places in this country, who should 
have known better, spouting out cheap axioms, showing they have 
never mastered the first principles of governmental statesmanship. 
What has saved us from the mistakes of these men? The great 
hand of directing God and His sword, bathed in the light of 
Heaven. That takes the superfluities out of the social system, the 
wanton waste, the wickedness and excess, the cant of the law, 
and all else of naughty superfluity, these disappear when you 
come into the presence of His everlasting judgment. That is 
where we now stand. We are not so anxious to claim God on 
our side, as to be on His side, until He shall bring forth His 
verdict. 



THREE: PHILIP MARSHALL BROWN 

Professor of International Law at the University of Princeton 

I hesitate to break the spell of what we have just listened 
to. We have had the depths of wisdom, the heights of eloquence 
and the breadth of view which, I am sure, have stimulated us all 
— I know in my case, almost too much. The emotion that has 
been stirred in us is such that I think most of us would prefer 
to go away quietly and think a while. 

I appreciate greatly the honor of being invited to this club. 
I have appreciated the privilege of being here this afternoon. 
I realize the truth of the statement that Mr. John Bassett Moore 
made to me several years ago, two years ago at least, when he said 
that one of the greatest privileges that he had was when he was 
invited to come here and address this club. 

If you were to ask for an authority on international law, I 
should, without hesitation, ask you to listen again to that great 
leader of that subject in this country. 



66 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

I had it in mind to speak somewhat on the subject of inter- 
national law this afternoon. I think possibly I might differ with 
some of you as to the nature of its functions. I am prepared, 
however, to admit, for one, that international law has been dis- 
credited in part by its enemies, but I think it has been discredited 
more by its friends than by its enemies. I think it has not been 
stated in terms which were applicable to actual conditions. It has 
been presented rather as a code of morality than as a system of law 
destined to protect interests, and this war has certainly showed 
us that we must all of us attempt to make certain adjustments in 
our ideas, and I, for one, in a very humble capacity, I assure you, 
shall be doing my best to make those adjustments. 

I do not share the idea that it is the function of international 
law to regulate war. Some people seem to have that idea, that 
international law has broken down at this time. It never was in- 
tended to regulate war, as you regulate the contest of a football 
game or a boxing match. The true purpose of international law, 
gentlemen, is to regulate the peaceful relations of states, and as to 
those functions which you hear so much about, may I call your 
attention simply to one fact which is so often ignored, that inter- 
national law is not like ordinary law. It does not pretend to be. 
Why confuse different laws? International law is, in itself, a 
different kind of law, as the law which prevails between individ- 
uals differs from the law that prevails between groups and 
corporations. It operates in different ways. And may I sug- 
gest to you that its sense, its great, fundamental sense, which is 
ignored often, is the desire for reciprocity and the fear of retalia- 
tion. 

In ordinary times of peace, international law is observed with- 
out question in the intercourse of nations and diplomacy. We 
do not know all the successes of diplomacy. Mr. Hay once re- 
marked that in diplomacy as in love, a man was not entitled to 
boast of his successes. And yet diplomacy has its great successes 
in normal times, and the difficulties and frictions that are over- 
come by diplomacy, few outside ever realize. 

The great driving power behind international law is, I be- 
lieve, this realization, which is, of course, expressed in finer 
terms in the Golden Rule, which, after all, is a utilitarian rule that 
if a nation does not do these things by another nation it will not 
receive the benefits from that nation that might be derived by their 
observance. Or worse still, the spirit of retaliation may be 
roused. 

And when we speak of the breakdown of Christianity or of 
international law, let us remind ourselves of this simple, practical 
fact that twenty nations of the world, representing practically 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 67) 

four-fifths of the world, are united together in defense of inter- 
national law. I would like to speak more directly to the point 
which was touched upon so wonderfully by Senator Kenyon, the 
statement of Stephen Decatur, when he said in that toast of his : 
"Our country, in her intercourse with foreign nations may she 
always be right, but our country, right or wrong." 

Before I plunge into this, may I say a personal word? I have 
as you know, the great privilege of being in contact with the stu- 
dents of a great university. Since this war began I have en- 
deavored in my own way, from the start, without equivocation, 
without any attempt to be academic, or even judicially-minded, to 
maintain before my students the necessity of the United States 
abandoning its impossible role of neutrality and of doing its duty 
as a good international citizen. It seemed to me to be mere 
pedantry for a professor at such a time to teach international law 
without referring to the fact that international law would cease 
to exist if Germany, by any chance, had been permitted to 
triumph ; and more than that, it has seemed to me that since we 
got into the war, it is no longer a time for academic discussion. 
The proposition before us is essentially a military proposition, 
and I, for one, yielding to the feeling which I know animates 
every one of your gentlemen here, could not resist the urge any 
longer, and I am abandoning my work as a teacher to go across 
to the other side and do the immediate thing that I can, to get as 
near the trenches as I can, because I think that is the only way 
I can square my own conscience. When I have seen these young 
men going out from Princeton, among them a young nephew of 
Senator Kenyon's, a brilliant student, who is now out flying for 
his country, I feel it is my duty to go too. And I say this by way 
of apology, because this is my last opportunity to say one or two 
things in public that have been on my mind, as it seems to me 
that this is purely a question of winning out in this war. It 
is not a thing for discussion. I am not privileged to go into 
the firing line. I am only going to help out in the Army Y. M. 
C. A. in Egypt and Palestine, but I hope to God, if the war con- 
tinues, that I may have my privilege to bear an arm yet. 

A German-American friend of mine once said to me, "I never 
will subscribe to that doctrine 'Our country, right or wrong' ; never, 
never. I shall reserve to myself the right of saying whether I 
will support my country." That was before we went to war. I 
am pleased to state that this German-American is one of the 
most loyal supporters of this country at this present moment, 
and why ? Because he discovered that this thing is absolutely true : 
There can be no such thing as a divided allegiance. It is a case 
of your country, right or wrong. In the oath of citizenship you 



68 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

will find these phrases "I declare on oath that I will support the 
Constitution and laws of the United States of America, against 
all enemies, foreign or domestic, and that I will bear true faith 
and allegiance to the same." Decatur interpreted that in general 
as well as in a specific way. Benedict Arnold interpreted it in 
another way. If we are to believe the narrative that is set forth 
in that extremely interesting book by Ambassador Stimson, to 
the Argentine Republic, Arnold got himself into this state of mind 
through supposing that half of England was willing to make 
peace with us on generous terms; that the original controversy 
we had with her was settled and that he would be rendering a 
great service to the cause of England and the United States if he 
would perform his dastardly deed. It seems to me there are 
near-traitors in this country at present. They are the people 
who have never accepted the verdict of their fellow-countrymen 
and who are now arguing in every way in their power for a spe- 
cial form of peace. There is a certain periodical that appears 
weekly which every now and then runs along that line. They are 
like that kind of man who is a member of a corporation and when 
he has been voted down, goes out and tries to defeat the corpora- 
tion every way he can. We have in our midst, I fear, a large 
number of such people who, without realizing the danger, think 
that it would be a good thing to make peace at this time. 

Then, there is the internationalist in our midst, and there are 
many such, in my humble opinion. The I. W. W. is, of course, 
the most pronounced. There is another type of idealist too. You 
have met them; I have met them; represented by such men as 
Edward Steiner, who has contributed so much to us, a man who 
has such vague ideas of international brotherhood that he never 
has been able to find a definite attachment with any one of them. 
Some of them preach that we must first be loyal to this great 
brotherhood of man. They seem to be incapable of realizing that 
you can't trust a man to be loyal to a vague ideal who isn't true 
to his own community. These men are men "without a country ;" 
incapable muddlers in a way; men who have not that sense of 
deep personal devotion and attachment to their own nation. 

But there may be men with two countries, as Senator Kenyon 
has pointed out. And Switzerland, of course, is an example. It is 
possible to vote here and to vote in Switzerland. It doesn't mat- 
ter. The Swiss Republic permits it and we permit it. And men 
can vote in this country for President of the United States and 
not be a citizen of this country. According to the German Law 
of 1913, citizenship is not lost by one who, before acquiring for- 
eign citizenship, has secured, on application, the written consent 
of the competent authorities to retain his citizenship. Before 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 69 

this consent can be given, the German Consul should be heard. 
Surely, the significance of this is not lost on you. When it was 
first introduced in the Reichstag, they were frank enough to say 
that it was meant to hold the Germans all over the globe, and it 
was intended to be a reward for those who served the German 
Government, wherever they might be found. 

That is one thing that has got to be straightened out when we 
come to terms of peace. Such a law as that must not be per- 
mitted to go unchallenged. You know, of course, that the Ger- 
mans have claimed that there were as high as thirty million of 
German blood or the descendants of German blood in this coun- 
try. The German-American Alliance claims to reach at least two 
million five hundred thousand persons. There are six hundred 
German-American papers. We know of the intrigues, the tele- 
grams, for example, which last April poured into the Capital, 
five hundred thousand telegrams which I believe followed any one 
of eight different forms, protesting against our going to war. 
We know of Count von BernstorfFs "slush fund." We know 
of von Papen's activities and his reference to the "idiotic Ameri- 
cans," and I think one of the finest things was what Gerard said 
when the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Berlin reminded him 
that in case of trouble there were five hundred thousand German 
Reservists in America, and Gerard reminded him that there were 
also five hundred and one thousand lamp-posts. 

I do not attempt to charge the German-Americans with still 
carrying on this insidious work. I presume the authorities at 
Washington have taken care of that; but I do wish to call your 
attention to this fact, that part of this extreme scheme of Ger- 
many's was to get a hold on the vitals of this nation. 

Then I want to call your attention to another type. I want to 
speak now of the intellectual anarchist, and perhaps I am privi- 
leged to know Something about him, being in that business. But 
I want to call your attention to the fact that in this country ex- 
treme individualism has had full play to such an extent that we 
are reaping now some unfortunate fruits. 

There is an academic attitude throughout the land towards 
vital problems which I think is unworthy of all who profess to 
be leaders of thought. We have had a great deal of intellectual 
gymnastics, a great deal too much. You have seen it in the law. 
You know with what ease an able lawyer can make black look 
white. You know how in philosophy the philosophers are still 
playing the old game that was played two thousand years ago, 
of toying with the intellectual processes, of showing that by di- 
viding the distance between two points and keeping on dividing 
it, you never arrive at the point. We have had it in religion. We 



70 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

have had the intellectual approach to religion, not getting one 
anywhere. We have had the pacifist propaganda. Our peace men 
have taught us that wars never paid. We have had the chief 
apostle of that doctrine, Norman Angell, still writing vigorously 
in the present year, that there never had been a dishonorable 
peace or an honorable war. We have been told that preparedness 
brought on war; that the existence of a fire department created 
more fires. We have had a great deal of this which, it seems to 
me, can only be characterized as sophistry. It is intellectual leger- 
demain. It has been going on until our young men have lost their 
sense of values, the difference between right and wrong, the 
practical things of everyday life. They have been taught that 
everything could be treated from a purely intellectual standpoint. 

Now we have the demand for freedom of speech. "Freedom" 
is a great word to conjure with. A great deal has been said about 
the freedom of the seas. I am unable to understand what is 
meant by "freedom of the seas." As far as freedom of speech is 
concerned, you can reduce it to absurdity at once by saying that 
no man is free to say what he pleases when he pleases. 

Democracy never shows itself, in my opinion, so great as 
when it puts restrictions on itself. They talk about being "Prus- 
sianized" in times of war. When democracy chooses, for the suc- 
cessful prosecution of this war, to put a curb on the freedom of 
speech, it seems to me it is demonstrating its greatness. I think 
it is most unfortunate that the issue of freedom of speech should 
have been raised in the colleges and universities. I think, as a 
rule, there is a vast freedom of speech in the colleges and uni- 
versities. I cannot quite sympathize with President Lowell in 
that regard. I would say, on the contrary, that the college pro- 
fessor is under a particular obligation as to what he says in public 
and how he says it. 

You men who are sending your sons to college have a perfect 
right to demand that college professors should be extremely care- 
ful as to what they say in public or in the classroom, for that 
matter. There are decided limitations on freedom of speech in 
times of war. There are home trenches as well as trenches in 
France. We have our own trenches to defend and protect over 
here, and when any man claims the privilege of talking near- 
sedition or real sedition, sedition which cannot be reached by the 
law, it seems to me that no one that ever criticizes a great liberty- 
loving people like ours should be surprised if we at times lose pa- 
tience and say "That is enough of this. This is a question of 
decency, not a question of law." 

Now there is in addition a demand for a restatement of our 
war aims. I do not see that our soldiers and sailors and all of 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 71 

those of us who have loyally accepted this war are asking for a 
constant restatement of the aims. There is no question in our 
minds as to what we are fighting for. We knew from the start, 
and we had time to make up our minds — too much time to make 
up our minds. Who are asking for a restatement of war aims? 
Well, first of all, the pro-Germans, unquestionably; then, sec- 
ondly, the pacifists who never accepted this war, the puling paci- 
fists who are permitted to speak and to carry on their propaganda 
who, because some of their forefathers were willing to die for the 
right of freedom, are asking us to restate our aims. 

And there is the internationalist with the vague ideas, who 
keep asking us to state our aims. And then, lastly, unfortunately, 
there is the quitter in our midst, the man who loses his grip, who 
sees the horror and only the horror, the man who, like Lord 
Lansdowne, or our own President Eliot, I fear, is tired and 
weary of the war and would gladly compromise and get out, the 
man like Horace Greeley in the Civil War, who, if I remember 
history aright, created untold difficulties for President Lincoln. 
But this time it is worse than that. This is an insidious propa- 
ganda that has been going on, first in Russia with its terrible after- 
math, Italy with its breakdown, France with its trouble and what 
not, and England with a force which I personally am inclined to 
believe is much greater than is generally conceded. 

Why is it that Lloyd George and President Wilson were com- 
pelled to come out again and formulate their war aims? I am 
not concerned with the context of what they have said. The 
question is, why were they compelled again and again to make this 
statement? I think the answer is to be found in this insidious 
propaganda which is trying to cast distrust on the motives of this 
war, which is trying to sow trouble between us and our Allies ; 
and, fundamentally, whose tactics is to try and concentrate dis- 
cussion on a program instead of on principles. 

You and I know that it is impossible to get anywhere on a 
program if we are not agreed on principles. It is impossible for 
us to negotiate with Germany until she accepts whole-heartedly 
the same principles which we preach. Moreover, you cannot, in a 
great world war of this size where the situation changes from one 
day to another, where rules are laid down which cannot pos- 
sibly be altered, where claims are put forth that were unex- 
pected, it is impossible for one side to come forward and lay all 
its cards on the table ; and any one who demands it and puts pres- 
sure on one side to do that is putting that side to an unfair ad- 
vantage and is really working in favor of the other side. Above 
all, it seems to me it is impossible to compromise with 
an outlaw. The idea of any one daring to ask when a bri- 



72 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

gand, when an outlaw, has his victims by the throat, — to ask the 
victims what they are fighting for ! The idea of putting the vic- 
tim, Belgium, on a level with. Germany and asking for a restate- 
ment of what they are fighting about ! 

I may be too strong, but it seems to me that this thing 
has gone far enough; that we have no right further to dis- 
cuss a program of peace until we have settled the fundamental 
question as to whether or not both sides are willing to agree on 
the principles. 

In closing, may I call your attention to those principles ? When 
is a country right and when is it wrong? Decatur said, "Our 
country, right or wrong." Posterity can't tell us ; we can't wait 
for history to tell us. We can't ask public opinion abroad to tell 
us. There are moments when no nation can escape the respon- 
sibility for reaching its decision with the evidence before him. 
I know that probably a good many of you felt that way at the 
time that in the Panama Tolls question the mere fact that all 
Europe seemed to be opposed to our point of view made it neces- 
sary for us to abandon our point of view. I remember a dis- 
cussion with a great international lawyer and he said at least the 
question was debatable, and to say that because France and Ger- 
many and all the other nations of Europe wished to benefit by 
the same concessions that England should obtain did not make 
the United States necessarily wrong. No one individual can de- 
cide the issues. No one individual in a great democracy has the 
privilege of saying whether his country is right or wrong. The 
answer surely is plain, that the majority alone can say. 

As I understand it in connection with war, it means that when 
the nation has expressed its deliberate opinion through its chosen 
representatives then there can be no question of the duty of every 
other citizen in this country to accept the verdict and to go for- 
ward as one man. In that sense, then, Decatur's saying is abso- 
lutely true, ethically and every other way. The voice of the 
people, "the divine average," as Whitman calls it, is what we 
can fall back on. We may make mistakes; but living in a de- 
mocracy, that is the only way in which we reach conclusions, 
and I take it that in time of war the man, the pacifist or any 
other man, who refuses to accept the verdict of his country is in 
a position where he must either be an out and out traitor or get 
out. 

The intellectual anarchist such as I have been speaking of 
has no place in a democracy. The extreme individual who puts 
pride of personal opinion over all else, who has no decent respect 
for the opinions of mankind, has no place in a democracy. 

When is a country wrong? I would say, briefly, when a 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 73 

people permit their own destinies and those of their neighbors to 
be controlled by a ruthless autocracy. When a democracy has 
had no opportunity to control its own destinies, when it has been 
thrown into a war as the people of Germany have been thrown 
into the war, I say that in such a situation a German has a right 
to question whether or not his country is right or wrong. And 
there is this difference : In a democracy we have to assume that 
we are right when we have reached our opinion in proper, legal 
process ; but in an autocracy as in Germany where the German 
people have been the prey of their own government and that gov- 
ernment has used them to make prey of the whole world, I say 
that we can confidently appeal to a German and ask him to stop 
a minute, "Are you right or wrong?" 

Now, Germany can have peace when the German people as- 
sume and exercise this full responsibility. I believe, personally, 
that there is going on in Germany at this moment, from a great 
many evidences which are cumulative in their value, a great po- 
litical upheaval, a revolution. When the leader of the Conserva- 
tives gets up in the Reichstag and bewails the fact that the coun- 
try is in a wrong tendency, that Michaelis was forced out because 
the Reichstag would have it so, it seems to me we have something 
pretty solid to go on, evidencing that what President Wilson and 
the Allies have insisted on is really being consummated. 

And, in closing, it seems to me that this is no time for us to 
weep. Hindenburg, in the beginning of the war, said the war 
would go to the nation which had the strongest nerves, and it 
seems to me we are seeing the truth of that to-day. If we can 
hold 'out vigorously, without any fear of results, without any de- 
sire to compromise with an outlaw, if we can hold on, Democracy 
which has been working since 1848 in Germany will triumph, and 
we will be able to negotiate with people who will accept the re- 
sponsibility for what has happened and will accept the responsi- 
bility for peace. 

I have taken the liberty to say this thing because I believe that 
we must not lose what we have already purposed to acquire and 
the national consciousness that has been referred to the unity 
that is coming out of this — we must not lose that. 

I am so glad that Senator Kenyon emphasized the idea of uni- 
versal military training. Those of us who have had the privilege 
of going into the camps and talking with these men have come 
to realize what a marvelous transformation has come over this 
land through this compulsory military training. Let us admit it ; 
there was caste in this country, cutting between the rich and the 
poor, between the educated and the uneducated; and universal 
military training is doing more to bring the people together than 



74 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

anything else we have had. Four of the students of my class 
are already dead. The sacrifice we will be called upon to make 
in every part of this country is going to do something sublime to 
us all, and we will get a national consciousness and a national 
unity which, I regret to say, I do not think has heretofore existed. 
And I would plead for a patriotic intolerance at this time of 
anything that stands in the way of our first of all conducting this 
war efficiently to a successful conclusion, or our unifying and 
bringing together all the ends of this great country. We must 
not lose the fruits of this great sacrifice. 



FOUR: HONORABLE LOUIS DE SADELEER 

B elgian Commissio n 

First, I wish to express my most sincere thanks for the invi- 
tation that you have so kindly extended to me, and for your hearty 
welcome. I wish to express the same cordial thanks to the 
Honorable Senator Kenyon for his eloquent words of sympathy 
to my country. 

If this war, as it has been rightly said, has become a world's 
war, the greatest history has ever known, the reason of its mag- 
nitude is that on one side we have the struggle for freedom, 
justice and democracy by the free nations, while on the other 
side the barbarity and despotism of the middle-ages are incar- 
nated in the Prussian militarism, and we Belgians are grateful 
to the honored President of the United States who has recently 
outlined the conditions of peace and recalled the fate of Belgium, 
and in agreement with all the Allies, has proclaimed that no 
peace is possible unless Belgium is restored in her full political, 
economic and military independence. Belgium, indeed, above all, 
is the living symbol of the principles at stake in the war. 

It was on August the second, 1914. In the morning of that 
day the German Minister at Brussels, von Billow, told represen- 
tatives of the Belgian newspapers, that Belgium need have no fear 
on account of the war already decided against France, that Ger- 
many would respect the existing treaties. 

The same German envoy in the evening of the same day 
called on our Foreign Office, with an ultimatum from Berlin 
letting us know that if before the next morning at 7 o'clock we 
had not allowed the German armies to pass through Belgium, 
surrendering our fortifications of Liege and Namur and thus con- 
senting to become the accomplices of Germany to crush France, 
Germany should invade Belgium and treat her as an enemy. 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 75 

A War Council was held the same night at ten o'clock at the 
Royal Palace, the King presiding. I had the honor to attend it. 

We were unanimous in our answer to Berlin. We recalled the 
solemn treaties signed by Prussia, Austria, Great Britain, France 
and Russia, after our glorious Belgian Revolution of 1830, pro- 
claiming Belgium a perpetual neutral State, these treaties oblig- 
ing Germany to defend Belgium, if her neutrality was menaced. 
We recalled that for more than eighty years Belgium had been 
faithful to her international obligations. We added that the Bel- 
gian Government, if we were to accept the German proposals, 
would sacrifice the honor of the nation and betray its duty 
towards Europe, but if Germany should persist in her announced 
perjury, the Belgian Nation was firmly resolved to repel by all 
means in its power every attack upon its rights. 

You know what followed. Having but a little time 
at my disposal, I can give only a brief account of it. The same 
night we sent our mobilized troops to the German border by 
more than a thousand special trains. The heroic General Leman 
was appointed Commander-in-Chief for the defense of the posi- 
tion of Liege. He opposed alone with his small but brave army 
during a fortnight the innumerable hordes and immense war ma- 
chine of the Germans, blocking their way to Paris, which they 
had hoped to reach in a few days. The Prussians were so unable 
to advance that they were obliged to bring big siege guns from 
Austria, who although yet at peace with us, and although as 
well as Prussia was a guarantee of our neutrality, committed 
the treachery to send them. 

General Leman, seriously wounded, fell under the ruins of 
the last fort. 

Then followed the battles near Namur, Haelen, Aerschot, 
Louvain, Malines, etc., the brilliant sorties of Antwerp which con- 
tributed so much to the victory of the Marne, the siege of Ant- 
werp; the retreat from Antwerp; the battles of Flanders 
and the heroic defense of the Yser, preventing the Germans from 
reaching Calais, one of their greatest objectives; and for more 
than three years now the Belgian Army, strongly reorganized, has 
fought there day and night, making vain all renewed efforts of 
our enemies to reach the French coast. 

This has been the response of Belgium to Germany. 

The losses of our army have been tremendous and you will 
permit me to pay a respectful homage to the memory of our noble 
sons, who gallantly gave their lives for the defense of our sacred 
soil and the cause of liberty. 

Since the sacrilegious invasion of Belgium, the sufferings of 



76 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

our civilian population also have been great. You know the wan- 
ton destruction of so many of our beautiful historical cities and 
towns, of the celebrated University of Louvain (dating back five 
centuries) with the invaluable treasures of her library; the mur- 
der en masse of inoffensive inhabitants, of priests, women, chil- 
dren by the German troops; the organized plunder, the levies 
of millions of dollars on cities and villages, the absence of all 
guarantee of defense for the unfortunate, dragged before the 
odious military tribunals, organized by the Teutons and against 
which the jurists of the entire world have protested. 

You know also of the infamous deportations of more than 
100,000 Belgian citizens, reducing them to a state of slavery, 

A good many of them died in Germany from starvation. Oth- 
ers are only returned to their country when they are suffering 
from tuberculosis and other incurable diseases. 

When these facts, turning back the Christian civilization 
twenty centuries, to the darkest times of the Neros and the Calig- 
ulas, became known here, just after the presidential election of 
November, 1916, they raised in this country the most admirable 
explosion of protest, perhaps, ever seen. Prominent people of 
all opinions, the clergy of all denominations, the universities and 
colleges, the newspapers, were leading the movement. Every- 
where, from the North to the South, from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, splendid meetings were organized and the resolutions, 
unanimously voted were, among others, conceived in the follow- 
ing sense. I am citing textually : 

"That, irrespective of former governmental action, it is hereby 
made known to all men everywhere that no government which, 
after due protest, persists in casting freemen into bondage can 
longer be regarded by liberty-loving Americans as having a place 
in the family of civilized nations." (Philadelphia Meeting, Janu- 
ary 7th, 1 91 7.) 

America was still neutral. But, Germany having despised all 
these protests as she had disregarded all former protests against 
her barbarian warfare, the ruthless sinking of undefended ships 
by her submarines and continuing to violate all divine and human 
laws, America, on the next February third, broke off all diplo- 
matic relations with her, and on April 6th she chivalrously 
declared war on Germany, and was applauded by all civilized 
nations. 

Some friends have requested me to say a few words concern- 
ing the present conditions in Belgium, where about seven million 
inhabitants are prisoners in their own country under the bar- 
barian rule of the invader. 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WAR 77 

According to all official information there has been for the 
last few months a real famine in Belgium. Many people are dy- 
ing of starvation, especially children, women and elderly people. 

Owing to different circumstances, imports of food from the 
United States unfortunately have declined since last summer. 

Baron de Broqueville, our Prime Minister, in an address de- 
livered at the Trocadero in Paris, in November last, stated that 
the Belgian population had only received 14 per cent, of fats and 
29 per cent, of succulent foods of the amount needed. In an ad- 
dress delivered in Antwerp, at the meeting of the Relief Commit- 
tee of the province of Antwerp held also in November, Hon. L. 
Franck, Alderman of the City, stated in turn, that the program 
provides for 11,000 tons of imported food every month and that 
only 60 per cent, or less of that amount had been received. I am 
proud to add that, notwithstanding all their suffering, the patriotic 
spirit of the Belgians remains indomitable. 

America has most generously helped us morally and materially 
since the very beginning of the war. Our people feel confident 
that you will do it more than ever. Every one knows of your 
endless power and efficiency. You have placed it at the service 
of the world's freedom. You are gallantly fighting side by side, 
with Belgium and the Allies. America's flag has never been de- 
feated in any war. Our common cause shall be victorious, for 
it is the cause of justice, liberty, and democracy, which is im- 
mortal ! 



THIRD DISCUSSION 

JANUARY NINETEENTH, I9I8 

THE AIMS OF DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT 

CRISIS 



THE AIMS OF DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT 

CRISIS 



ONE: BY HONORABLE WALTER E. EDGE 

Governor of New Jersey 

I wondered for the moment, during the course of the luncheon, 
just why you still retain the name of the "New York Republican 
Club." As I look about the room I think it would be well to call 
it the "New Jersey Republican Club," as I see many of my fellow- 
statesmen, and I mean that from any standpoint you wish to take 
it, in the room. However, that is in no way different from the 
generosity of New Jersey along every line. We feel, modestly 
speaking, that we have contributed to New York's wonderful suc- 
cess, New York's "punch," New York's determination, through 
loaning you in the daytime, at least, thousands of loyal New Jersey 
men, and we are very glad to have them spend that part of their 
time in New York, to loan them to you, so far as that would 
seem wise and proper, to make all the money they can in New 
York and to spend it in New Jersey ! However, we are in no way 
jealous, and I feel in no way strange. Before I decided that per- 
haps I might help save the State in those days, I was a New York 
business man and I see some of my associates of those days in 
the room to-day, and I thank them for still remembering me, 
now that I have fallen and gotten into politics. 

We are far from being jealous. We realize this, and if I have 
had one thought beyond all others in connection with the many 
responsibilities of public life, it has been along the line of part- 
nership between New York and New Jersey. I have felt that this 
one great big national institution, you might term it, the port of 
New York, will be neglected so far as New Jersey is concerned, 
excepting through individual enterprise here and there of course 
— very much better organized so far as New York is concerned. 
I am very glad to see, with the inspiration of your distinguished 
Governor, Governor Whitman, the cooperation of legislators of 
the two States. We have now entered into a hard and fast part- 
nership with New York. We are not fighting lighterage suits 
through the courts, but we are cooperating to develop that won- 
derful institution with its possibilities, the center, in my judg- 

81 



82 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

ment, or it will be, of all the industrial and commercial develop- 
ment of the world, with our great country on one side, and, when 
the war is over, the countries abroad on the other. We have 
entered into a hard and fast partnership, and have succeeded, 
even in these days of war, in interesting the Government in the 
importance of it, so that our New York-New Jersey Port Com- 
mission is now officially recognized by the Federal authorities, 
and we are assured by the War Board of the Port of New York 
that even in great transportation problems under government 
control, nothing will be done in connection with transportation, 
without taking into conference both Commissions of our two 
States now in partnership. 

I would like to talk with you in the few moments that 
I have to remain with you, and that, by the way, perhaps draws 
forth an explanation of, not why I am here, but why I am pro- 
tected by so many able, vigorous, healthy looking officers. I 
don't need all that escort when I come to New York. I fre- 
quently come to New York, and I hope even New Jersey doesn't 
know I am coming to New York, and I don't bring any members 
of my Staff ; but to-day we have a second duty and pleasure. We 
are going to visit Camp Merritt, with General Shanks in com- 
mand, to look over the cantonment, visit the men who are there 
to dedicate one of the public buildings, and that being a military 
responsibility, of course the Governor must be accompanied by 
his very good-looking Staff. 

I started to say that I would like to talk to you to-day about 
these business developments, about how it is possible, in my 
judgment, in normal times, for a state government, with all its 
power, really to enter into the business life and the business de- 
velopment of a state and its various units. I have been inter- 
ested in that particularly — the development of public responsi- 
bility — how, with the tremendous advantage a state government 
has, instead of being a deterrent to business, how it can en- 
courage and help mobilize the assets and possibilities of a state 
in such a way that industrial and commercial development fol- 
lows, and happiness is brought more and more to all classes of 
people. 

But we all realize that many of these economic questions, so 
far as they relate to business, must, to a great extent, be tempo- 
rarily, at least, set aside. We are not putting them all aside in 
New Jersey. We recognize that even in France to-day, almost 
within the hearing of the noise of the battle line on the front, 
they are building tunnels, and we in New Jersey propose to con- 
tinue, so far as it seems at all practical to do it, the development 
of our state from a business standpoint. We are going to build 






DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 83 

our highways. We have now fifteen million dollars readily 
available, or at least it will be from time to time as necessary, 
to build a highway system. We propose to finance at this session 
of the legislature the problem of joining with you when you are 
ready, and we hope it will be soon, to build a vehicular tunnel 
under the Hudson River. 

We don't propose to set aside anything that we think impor- 
tant, with all due consideration to our other problems — and we 
are just as deeply engrossed in this as it is possible to be — we don't 
propose to put aside anything which we think will, to an extent, 
not only help solve them, but which will make America all the 
more ready to take up that unusual responsibility of leading 
the world in constructive enterprise after the war is over. As I 
understand it, your Saturday meetings are practically a by-prod- 
uct of the club for the purpose of discussion. Every discussion 
must necessarily form itself in a way into a war conference, and 
very properly so. We have that responsibility and we have 
that problem to solve, and we are all engaged in doing so. 

New Jersey, — and I am going to speak particularly of New 
Jersey in this connection but very briefly, — New Jersey is a 
busy little state, not large in area, with a population of approxi- 
mately 3,000,000, situated — I think it is a good illustration to com- 
pare New Jersey in a way with Belgium — near the large metro- 
politan centers ; industrially very, very busy, its population very 
compact; and I might also say that from a standpoint of unselfish 
patriotism, it likewise, if necessary, can be compared to Belgium. 
New Jersey to-day, or, at least, up until a few weeks ago — I 
have not had the actual returns in recent weeks — had more boys 
in the service of the United States in all branches of the service, 
in proportion to its population, which, of course, does not neces- 
sarily include or exclude the draft, because that is similar every- 
where, had sent, in proportion to its population more men into 
the service of the Government — the military service and the naval 
service — than any other State in this great big Union. We know 
the legacy that we have been given and the history of the other 
wars and other troubles of the United States and the legacy 
that they have left to this generation, and how difficult it may be 
to keep up to the traditions of Trenton and of Morristown and of 
Princeton and of Monmouth and of many other cities in history 
that you know just as much about as I do. 

But to-day we are not dealing with the past ; we are dealing 
with the immediate present and the future, and we are forgetting 
all those things, as you unquestionably are for the time, reveling 
as we do in our history, and are preparing to help solve these 
immediate problems to the best of our ability. 



84 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

I have refrained from criticizing those in higher authority. 
We are all in the military. You are in the military ; whether you 
wear a uniform or not, you are in the military too. You have 
many responsibilities in your own commercial and your own busi- 
ness life which may be contributing to the success of the war. 
I have felt that even if mistakes have been made, and many mis- 
takes have unquestionably been made, that our first duty was to 
forget those mistakes and simply do everything that we felt that 
we could do, following every suggestion from the National Gov- 
ernment, meeting every obligation and anticipating some, if it is 
possible to do it, and it has been, forgetting the errors and endors- 
ing the rapid progress that unquestionably, to an extent, has been 
made. However, I do feel — and I am going to speak very frankly 
about it — that perhaps we can best serve the Government if, while 
adhering to every proclamation or every order which is finally 
issued, of course adhering to it to the letter and doing everything 
in our power to have it carried out, at the same time we de- 
velop patriotism, which does not keep us from frankly expressing 
it, when we do feel that some things could be bettered by a more 
general knowledge throughout the country of the conditions, I 
believe we are better doing our duty to say so frankly. 

In other words, we have reached a period, as I look upon it, 
in the war, that unfortunately, very unfortunately, there is doubt, 
decided doubt, in the minds of all classes of our citizenship in 
different sections of the country. It is not in any way political. 
It is far from any thought of politics. We don't know any party 
to-day. We haven't any right to know any party to-day. 

Speaking of that which is unquestionably in all of your minds, 
the recent order in connection with our use of fuel and its rela- 
tion to industry, I have already expressed myself publicly. I 
have only this comment — I won't call it criticism — to make, and 
I think it is proving itself: if the condition is so bad, which it 
apparently is, as to have required this very drastic order from 
Federal authorities, then the wisdom of this democratic form of 
Government, in my judgment, and the question of a democratic 
form of government, dealing with all its people, should have been 
so expressed that the people of the country should have known 
that fact, been given sufficient warning of that condition, and be 
in a position better to cooperate and meet the exigencies of the 
government, rather than have an absolute business paralysis. In 
other words, my friends, and I don't want to be misunderstood, 
ever since the war started, I have only had one thought, and that 
is to cooperate with the Government, and I am not going over the 
details, I will leave that entirely to the people of New Jersey; 
but I do believe that the mistake of this country in this war, an/ 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 85 

it is well to talk about it because it must be stopped, is over- 
censorship as to what we are doing, when it doesn't interfere 
with our military or naval problems. You can trust the people 
of the United States. If you can't, we are not in a position to-day 
to assume the great responsibilities we are going to assume nec- 
essarily when we win this war. I don't mean by that, — of course, 
I don't, I haven't time to go into the details— I don't mean by 
that that the Government must tell the public through the press 
every plan. Of course not. But when things are in such distress- 
ing conditions, when furnishing material to our soldiers, are as 
it was demonstrated they were, it is very much better to put the 
responsibility frankly up to the business men of the country who 
are interested in it, rather than tell the country that everything 
is all right and there practicalTy isn't anything that could be im- 
proved upon. 

This country is ready to meet its obligations. That is the only 
general criticism that I would make of conditions to-day — no, it is 
specific, I believe — the President and his power, his determina- 
tion, his ability, are unquestioned anywhere. One of the contri- 
butions of New Jersey has been the contribution of Woodrow 
Wilson to lead the country at this time. And I haven't anything 
whatever to say except in praise, so far as his determination, so 
far as his carrying the responsibilities of this war, are concerned, 
but no man, however big, however able, however patriotic, how- 
ever American he is, and he is all of that and more too, can do 
this without having surrounding him the men who have made 
individual successes in every line of industry in this country 
which has made the country what it is. It is absolutely time 
to-day to open the Cabinet of the United States to men of this 
type, not simply to depend on men who are going loyally to Wash- 
ington, asking to be of help and service and being placed in some 
of the numerous offices of the National Council of Defense. 

That is not the position that some of our men to-day should 
be occupying, but there should be four or five portfolios in the 
Cabinet of the President of the United States, headed by men 
whom this country and practically all countries, from a business 
standpoint, know as the very heads of business success in this 
great, prosperous country. It will forever demonstrate that we 
are fighting this war as an American nation, without any thought 
of partisanship or party. That will renew confidence throughout 
this country which will make up for the present deplorable feeling 
that things are not going right, and that is a bad feeling to have, 
too, in a war, and with which to send hundreds of thousands of 
our boys to France to go "over the top." 

Certainly I haven't made these very rambling remarks with 



86 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

any thought in the world excepting that of cooperation. Many 
incidents might be interesting, some perhaps it would not be well 
to have publicly discussed because of their influence. It was told 
the other day by a colonel in the National Guard, a man who 
had served in the National Guard for thirty years, an excellent 
soldier from my viewpoint, that he had lost his commission, the 
only reason assigned being that he had not had the proper ele- 
mentary education in his early days. I don't know that it was said 
that it was because he had not had a college education ; I don't 
think it was. I know him intimately. He occupied in civil life a 
very responsible position with a large concern, for years the same 
position. It seemed to me that if true perhaps it had better be 
talked about ; if untrue, it had better be denied. It is a tragedy, 
as I look upon the development of our nation, if true; a nation 
where Presidents have been born in log cabins, with little oppor- 
tunity for education, and have always ruled, or at least, influenced 
the world in the settlement of important national and interna- 
tional questions. 

When that colonel, in charge of 3,600 boys, with thirty years 
of military experience, was able to have absolute discipline in his 
command, it seems to me that when he leads those boys in France 
he does not need a text book in one hand and a college diploma in 
the other; he needs only the stout heart of an American soldier. 
I say that because, if it is true, for the good of the service it 
should be stated; it should be answered. I understand the case 
is to be reopened. I hope it is. 

In the National Guard of New York and the National Guard 
of New Jersey I don't think there has been the slightest discrimi- 
nation, so far as I know, shown those boys. If it is necessary for 
the service, so be it ; the boys themselves have not complained. It 
is perfectly wonderful ; fifteen hundred Jersey boys in one camp 
in the South, and I have yet to receive one letter from an enlisted 
man from that tremendous number, complaining about his per- 
sonal experience in the cantonment. But I think that these offi- 
cers who have given all they have, have served so many years, 
should be given every possible opportunity to lead the boys, should 
have an opportunity, unless physically disqualified for service. I 
believe they will be given that opportunity but I am speaking of it 
because it is along the line of the other thought. I believe a little 
more public discussion in this country to-day will solve many of 
these problems, and will probably give a proper answer to many 
uncertainties which now exist, and it is time to wipe them out. 

I have spoken very publicly, very generally, somewhat criti- 
cally perhaps. It is necessary, I believe, at this time for men who 
have naturally some power and responsibility not to help the 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 87 

Government in formulating a new policy entirely but to help the 
Government to dispel this feeling of dissatisfaction. I am con- 
vinced that you cannot dispel it by simply sitting still in a way 
and carrying out the perfunctory problems that you have. I 
simply want to contribute everything that is in me and the power 
of New Jersey to help win this war. And I believe we are 
better doing it when we frankly, without passion, without preju- 
dice, state our views, as eight or nine months of continued life 
in a war atmosphere day and night has certainly enabled 
us to do. 

I don't want to cast any gloom. I have, just as you all have, 
no thought in the world but that America will come out of this 
war victorious. I have no doubt in the world that we will have 
our days as we have now, when it is necessary to take an account 
of stock, and probably in a way begin over again, and the quicker 
we realize these various cycles in our preparation, the sooner we 
will correct whatever evils occur. I am here simply as a soldier 
of the Republic, under the President of the United States. I will 
cooperate with him in everything, of course, that he wants us to 
do. I still will always claim the right to give a personal opinion 
in the interest of helping and in the interest of cooperation. 



TWO: BY DR. SHAILER MATHEWS 

Dean of Divinity School, the University of Chicago 

I was born in Maine. No man who was born in Maine and 
moved elsewhere will fail to tell you of the fact before he has 
spoken very long. For there is nobody so proud of Maine as 
the people who no longer live there! I moved out into the 
United States something like twenty-five years ago, and feel 
as if it were possible to look out upon the world with a real 
sense of the fact that there is a world the other side of the Hud- 
son ! I have recently had this sense of the extent of our country 
enlarged. I have been in California and in Texas and in New 
Jersey, and I feel as if I had been around the triangle of the 
American nation. 

Wherever you go you find a fundamental identity of atti- 
tude. True, we do not fly as many flags in the West as you have 
here in the East ; one might almost say that, like the course of 
empire, westward the course of flag-flying takes its way. The 
spirit, however, of the Central West and of the Pacific West is 
identical in its loyalty with that of the Atlantic seashore. 

We of the Central West have had our peculiar situations. We 



88 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

have had to shape up certain policies and develop certain atti- 
tudes because of our history and our various economic and social 
interests : but our attitude towards the war is that of the nation. 
we know that the world faces a crisis when the future is 
being settled. 

If you go back to the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, 
you will see a remarkable development of a spirit which found its 
- ssion in America first, and then in France and in England 
and then around the world. You might describe that spirit as the 
Anglo-American conception of government. It was not a refer- 
endum democracy that was then being developed : it was a rep- 
resentative democracy. The Eighteenth Century's struggle for 
rights found its completest expression in the rise of responsible 
government, in whatever form that might happen to be. Great 
Britain is to-day as truly democratic as is the United States. It 
is true, they have a king, but there are really two Georges gover- 
ing England just now, George the Fifth who might be described 
in the terms of Bagehot as the figure-head of the government, 
and Lloyd George who is the head of the government. When 
you contrast a third George with Lloyd George, you see the 
measure of general tendency of the Anglo-American concep- 
tion of government, the conception of a representative democ- 
racy finding its executive power through representation. Our 
Constitution is based upon that conception, and nation after na- 
tion has followed our example until at last there is no nation on 
the face of the earth that is not partially organized or fully organ- 
ized on that fundamental conception, except the German Em- 
pire, the Austrian Empire and Turkey. Of course, you must add 
Bulgaria. 

It is a very extraordinary situation, but a student of social 
movements will question whether it is the end of the story. About 
every hundred and twenty-five years there emerges a new cycle, 
which might be called the "Cycle of the Great Grandchildren,'' in 
which the accomplishments of the great grandfathers are re- 
garded as utter conservatism, and the future is described in some 
form of idealism as yet untried. 

There are three great political conceptions at work just now 
on the field of battle, and in the field of diplomacy. The first 
of them is the Prussian conception of the state as supreme but 
not democratic : the Anglo-American representative democracy ; 
and that radical democracy which has found expression in these 
latter days in the Bolshevik party of Russia. I fancy that we 
can understand the attitude of England towards the Jacobins in 
the French Revolution, as we compare our own attitude towards 
this Bolshevik movement in Russia. For the first time, the un- 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 89 

dercurrent of socialism has moved out into the control of a great 
state. No man can foretell how far that Bolshevikism is to go. 
As you look back over the last twenty years in the United States, 
you see a development along the lines which no one of us could 
well have forecast twenty years ago. To-day we are taking as 
matters of fact certain governmental activities that we should 
have denounced as radical dangers twenty years ago. 

The days of the future will be testing days — not of autocracy, 
for autocracy is doomed ; the whole course of social and political 
evolution sounds its death-knell. The other day the Kaiser said 
to his people that, in view of their splendid attitude during the 
war, he thought that after the war was over, it might be possi- 
ble, perhaps, for him to extend to the people a larger extent of 
electoral privileges. My guess is that his people will get them, 
whether the Kaiser extends those privileges or not. That is a 
part of the inevitable, and, gentlemen, the inevitable always comes 
off! 

But the real test is going to come in the struggle between the 
Anglo-American representative democracy, and the Russian Bol- 
shevik conception of direct democracy. That is an issue of effi- 
ciency for which we may well prepare. 

Our Constitutional development for the last few years has 
eventuated in an administration of college presidents. This is a 
great day for the college president in practical affairs. One col- 
lege president conducts the government of the United States, 
and pretty nearly the world just now ; and another college presi- 
dent represents democracy in the fuel line. A certain distin- 
guished Englishman came over here the other day, and seeing 
what was actually happening in the United States, said, "You 
people in America certainly believe in democracy, for we 
should never dare turn over the powers to one individual that 
you are so turning over. You must have an abounding faith 
that you can get them back again when the war is over." I take 
it that is an expression of the fundamental attitude, and it may 
be a prophecy of a more efficient democracy in the future. 

Of course, you can always get efficiency if you have a po- 
liceman to assist you. I remember when I was a student in 
Berlin, I carefully deposited the core of a pear in the gutter. 
I remember distinctly the wave of self-approbation which swept 
over me. But I had no sooner performed that rite of civic duty 
than a policeman marched up to me and said, "That is verboten. 
You must pick that core up and put it in that box over there." 
I obeyed. In a small way that was a specimen of German effi- 
ciency. You can always get efficiency of a certain sort if you 
have somebody to punish the man who won't obey. And the em- 



90 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

ciency of Prussianism is a more or less diluted form of 
schrecklichkeit. 

The efficiency of democracy is a very different sort of thing. 
You can't terrorize a democrat into doing what you want him to 
do. There have been times when democracy seemed to be an 
ingenious method of unseating a man just as he became efficient, 
and there are times in which you cannot help feeling that if talk 
is the salvation of democracy, it is also more or less of a danger. 

Educational processes in the development of efficient democ- 
racy are slow, and especially when you have, as we have had in our 
country the extraordinary and pioneering adventures in politics. 
We had made the State synonymous with citizenship and then 
opened up citizenship to all persons — by and bye we shall treat 
women as persons ! We are already doing it in more advanced 
sections. — This double adventure has of necessity made progress 
less rapid in our group efficiency than would have been the case if 
we could have forced obedience upon our citizens. 

I have been coming to feel of late, possibly rather pessimis- 
tically, that the way in which a democracy of any sort can get 
cumulative efficiency is by a series of explosive novelties. You 
bring novelties to the attention of a crowd, and they will hurrah 
and do something. They will get tired of doing it pretty quick 
and then you have to give them something else to do. The real 
leader in a democracy is not the man who drags people into do- 
ing what he wants, but the one who finds out first what they 
ought to do and which way they ought to go, and then persuades 
them into a proper state of mind. That takes leadership. Lead- 
ership is not the same as marching at the head of the procession. 
Small boys march at the head of a procession, and ahead of the 
band. But they are not the leaders, although they are the fore- 
goers. They always look around to see which way the proces- 
sion is going ! 

A genuine leader is able not only to lead his procession, but 
to keep close enough to it so that the procession does not have 
to send out reconnoitering parties to find out where its leader is 
gone. That in itself is a test requiring extraordinary capacity in 
a democracy. Place a man at the head of a democracy or a sec- 
tion of a democracy, whether it be national or local and demand 
of him leadership, and you at once face the relationship of the 
people who are going to be lead, to the leader. A great moment 
of war, like this, is giving us a new conception of what leadership 
in a democracy really is. We have thought that leadership meant 
selecting the small boy to lead the procession, and we dressed 
him up in certain of the paraphernalia of office and we have said 
to him, "Go to it, boy ; we will follow you if you go in the way in 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 91 

which we want you to go." And suddenly we find ourselves in 
a democracy with a leader not only responding to our conceptions, 
but actually telling us what we have to do ! It is not an entirely 
new experience. The war of 1861-65 did the same thing. The 
discussions of the Constitutional war powers of the President 
which grew out of the war of 1861-65 show that our fathers had 
to learn the same lesson which we have to learn just now; that 
when democracy requires leadership and not simply silent acqui- 
escence in our expressed suggestions as to a line of march, it has 
to learn the meaning of efficiency in a democracy. 

There are two ways open to us at that point. There is the 
way of the Prussian autocracy. It is a perfectly consistent ex- 
pression of the State, in accordance with which there has been 
worked out in Germany an efficiency never equaled except by the 
Roman Empire. On the other side, there is the referendum-by- 
universal-talk democracy of the Bolsheviki. But one cannot find 
efficiency in Russia. You can't run a government by universal 
talk. Somebody has got to do something. Between Prussian- 
ism and Bolshevikism lies our historically originated and pro- 
gressive conception of the State in which delegated power must 
transform ideals into executive action. We are learning how 
to make that transformation. We are actually finding efficiency 
in our democracy. 

Right here is an interesting contrast in psychology, as I catch 
it. The German, when he begins to fail, begins to brag ; the Eng- 
lishman or the American, when he begins to succeed, appoints an 
investigating committee to know why he didn't succeed faster! 

But as a question of the future, what will be the ultimate 
outcome of this new efficiency in terms of democracy. Are we 
to deliver ourselves into the hands of an autocracy masquerad- 
ing as a representative democracy or are we to move over into the 
Bolshevik conception of the State? Or is there a third alterna- 
tive? The Bolshevik attitude is as hostile to representative de- 
mocracy as it is to Prussianism. None of us can understand what 
is going on in Russia until we clear our minds of any idea that 
the Soviet movement resembles our representative democracy. 
It is a different conception, a different ideal of government that 
is emerging, and our great task is to determine in what way we 
shall develop. 

Can we carry over our great conception of representative de- 
mocracy into the new era which is bound to come ? We are apt to 
talk about this new era in a very general way. We forecast the 
things that are going to come for our children. If I read the 
situation correctly, we need not wait for our children to have it 
come. It is here, a new attitude towards the State. A very 



92 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

new conception of what our government as such is, and the ad- 
justment of the conception of governmental efficiency to demo- 
cratic interests and democratic efficiency is already on our hands. 

When one looks back over the last few months and sees what 
has been accomplished in the United States, one is amazed at the 
transformation which has come over the people of the United 
States — at the extent to which that new conception of the power 
of the executive in the midst of a representative democracy has 
gone. I know perfectly well there are plenty of things to criticize. 
Anybody can see that. I have recently visited a number of the 
camps. The situation breaks upon one like a revelation. I shall 
never forget the first time I was on Reilly Field. I may be bring- 
ing coals to Newcastle (that is an unfortunate reference! You 
have probably heard the definition of a fluent speaker. "Flu- 
ent — an adjective derived from 'flue,' a receptacle for hot air"). 
But go down to San Antonio and see that great aviation field. 
It will be impossible to describe the impression which that makes 
on you. jf When you bear in mind that the vast field is only 
one episode in the constitutional reconstruction of representa- 
tive democracy, you are impressed with the fact that there is 
a vitality and a power of conservation as well as of progress in 
our own governmental situation we never had suspected — at least, 
we men of this generation. 

Go back to 1914, when democracy was faced with its great task. 
You see the extraordinary development of the German State, 
with the control of Austria as well, and its enormous preparation ; 
and, on the other side, you see Great Britain with what the 
Germans called her "contemptible little army." They don't speak 
of it as "contemptible" since the Marne. You see an empire 
scattered over the world, very loosely connected, with Canada 
all but as independent as the United States, and the same as true 
of Australia. In three years, in two years, you have seen that 
democracy organizing itself, transforming itself, meeting the task 
more efficiently than the autocracy that had forty years the start 
of it. It is a thing we never suspected of democracy. We feared 
that democracy would tumble over itself when it tried to run. 
On the contrary, it goes forward in serried ranks, ready to go 
"over the top" of anything that is in its way. 

What has happened in the British Empire is happening here. 
We are so close to it that we don't realize the extraordinary 
movement, but we are doing something which I doubt whether we 
thought could be done. 

You remember, as I do, a couple of years before the war, or a 
little longer than that, there was a growing distrust of democ- 
racy in America. I remember very distinctly an evening spent 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 93 

in company with two of the biggest men in the business line in 
America. (College professors occasionally eat of the crumbs 
which fall from the high financiers' tables.) I remember our 
discussion. It was full of pessimism about democracy in Amer- 
ica. I tried in my feeble way to say a few kind words for the 
departed, but it was useless. The tombstone had been ordered 
and the only question was whether there should be engraved on 
it the virtues or the vices of the deceased. And yet, at this day 
one of those men — I don't dare describe his position because you 
might catch a suggestion as to who he is — is one of the leaders 
in the reorganization of this country of ours. Instead of a radical 
distrust of democracy, born of a tremendous success as a busi- 
ness man, he is seeing to it that certain forces of our national life 
are being organized and brought to a successfully efficient form. 

Did none of you, in 1914, go through a period of mental de- 
pression, when it seemed as if all the things you had hoped for 
were shown by the brutal reductio ad absurdum of the war to be 
of no significance whatever? Is there a man who feels that way 
to-day? We have found the recuperative powers of democracy; 
nay, we have seen the powers of democracy to beget new institu- 
tions capable of facing new situations. 

Three years ago I was over in Japan. I think I made some- 
thing like ninety speeches in twenty-seven days. I remember 
saying to Mr. Bryan (the late Secretary of State) when I came 
back: "Mr. Bryan, I don't know as even you can equal that 
record." I found in Japan a very interesting situation. Going 
over there with the orthodox American attitude towards our- 
selves, I suddenly found the Japanese people suspecting us of 
everything of which we suspected them. It took me several days 
to get that through my self-satisfied American head. Then I be- 
gan speaking at meetings which were organized for the purpose 
of permitting me to set forth the American point of view. I 
began with an exposition of the spirit of America. Gentlemen, 
one of the great experiences of a lifetime is to be thrust into an 
exposition of your national virtues. Of course, an extempora- 
neous explosion of nationalist buncombe is not difficult. You can 
always let the eagle scream, provided it does not turn out to be a 
dove of peace ; but to set forth accurately the position of America 
in international affairs, possessed not only the charm of nov- 
elty, but inspiration. In disclosing the general policies of the 
United States before those who suspected our country I could 
say what no representative of any other country on the face of the 
earth could say. It made you proud of being an American! I 
belong to a group of those who had been, on the whole, rather 
free in their criticism of America— j^f or there is nothing the aca- 



iU ONE HUNDRED PEB CENT AMERICAN 

domic mind likes bettor than to criticise thin *. which it has 

had no particular informa: stand face to face 

with 3 ins to intern. u see that 

our n .live democracy, however you may account tor it, 

een building u ies of precedents, which, unless all signs 

fail, will con- great, if not the greatest foundation of the 

Id. 

e were tv es, at least : the s<\ 

President All the world 
een struck with their similarity. Lloyd George said yester- 
sini j was not pn fed; that neither knew 

what the c And Lloyd liv inds forth be- 

there are t'. .; purposes for which 

ted. The first is the reinstatement of 
on of power. The second is the establish- 
ment of I peoples to choose 
themselves the s which they shall live. 
And the third is the 01 . i of a League of Nations which 
shall make war in the i ess babl< Those three | 

luct of a democratic conce if interna- 

tional relations. You couldn't get Germany to avow those three 
If she • . them, we should 

of twenty- four hours — to-morrow. 
TL the fundamental things for which we are stand- 

rid our President in his Four:,. \ eat affirmations has du- 
bed — in his own style — those propositions. 
That is no accident. It is the extension into world politics, 
gentlemer spirit of the United States and of Great Britain 

in dealing with democracies. If I had time, as I see I have not. 
I should be glad to sc . those outstanding prece- 

- which we have been building up. 

x our courtesy makes me think of a story that John Kelman 
told me about the British ship. There was a boy who 

and after it had been through the cen- 

- - "Dear i : everything had been 

ed down to the cud. "Your loving son. Willie," The censor, 

entry a tcnder-lu. est lines: "Willie is 

well, but a trifle garrulous." That is possibly my condition, 

but with your permission 1 will mention a few of these prece- 

s which we have built up. Take our Monroe Doctrine. 

g vd deal like woman suffrage, We don't know what it 

is and we don't know what the women are going to do with it, 

and we don't believe the women know themselves what they are 

going to do with us. but we know they are going to do it ! And 

ith the Monroe Doctrine. We don't know quite what it is 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 95 

and we don't quite know what it is going to do to us ; but we 
know, by the grace of God, it is going to do it ! 

You remember how it arose. Three of the most powerful 
nations in the world, with a great deal of piety, formed a Holy 
Alliance; and another alliance, which was not quite so pious but 
was a little more practical. For sometimes piety in politics is dip- 
lomatic camouflage. Those three nations organized a union to 
put down democracy. Whereupon our little country through the 
voice of President Madison threw into history a policy with two 
elements. The first was that hereafter no European power should 
have another foot of land more in South America, North 
America or Central America. The second was that no Euro- 
pean power should establish any colonies in South America, North 
America or Central America. We didn't have enough of navy to 
organize a naval review, and no army big enough for a headquar- 
ters' guard. But we notified those nations of our purpose. In 
God we trusted, in those days ! But the singular thing was that 
it worked ! You ask, Why ? It is perfectly evident those na- 
tions have taken us seriously because Great Britain has backed 
up the Monroe Doctrine with its fleets. 

We talk about our debt to France, and it is a great debt. We 
paid a part of it when we gave them the idea of a successful rep* 
resentative democracy back in 1789. We are going to pay a good 
deal more of that debt. We are paying it now. But the debt 
which the United States owes to Great Britain and has owed for 
a hundred years is beyond computation. For, if it had not been 
for Great Britain, the Monroe Doctrine would have been smashed 
half a dozen times. 

I want to read you one little quotation which I carry round 
with such things as I can afford to carry. You may have read 
it. It is a report of what a German Admiral said in 1898. It 
was placed in the archives of the State Department : "About fif- 
teen years from now, my country will start a great war. She 
will be in Paris about two months after the commencement of 
hostilities. Her move on Paris will be but a step toward her real 
object, the crushing of England. Some months after, we will 
put your country in your place with reference to Germany. We 
don't propose to take any of your territory (mighty decent of 
them!) but we do intend to take a billion or so of your dollars 
from New York and other places. The Monroe Doctrine will be 
disposed of by us and we will dispose of South America as we 
please. Don't forget, fifteen years from now !" 

International relationship is not built on treaties ; it is built on 
national attitude, and a community of spirit. That the boundary 
line to the north of us runs across the continent without forti- 



96 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

fication and without a soldier, is not a matter of treaties. It is 
born of a "gentlemen's agreement." In the hundred years in which 
we have been at peace, there is not a foot of the boundary we 
have not submitted to court ; there is not a codfish on the banks 
of Newfoundland that has not been submitted to arbitration ; but 
we have not fought. We have been building up precedents, a 
procedure of spiritual unity, born of a similar experience in rep- 
resentative democracy. 

The German attitude, as put forth in all of its treatises on the 
State, is perfectly clear; a state can grow by war; war is not a 
thing to be avoided ; it is simply to be timed. Germany has grown 
by annexation and indemnity. 

Our policy has been different. Of course, we had the Mexican 
War, but after we had taken from Mexico the provinces which 
Mr. Zimmermann was so concerned that Mexico should get back, 
we paid $15,000,000 for them. The victor paid the indemnity! 

We had a war with Japan in 1868. We happened to be over 
there, and the other nations got into war with Japan. Of course, 
Christians ought to hang together. We hadn't any navy, so we 
hired a gunboat of the Dutchmen and went to war. We took 
$800,000 from Japan. We couldn't digest it, and it stayed in the 
Treasury of the United States for fifteen years. In 1883 we 
paid back to Japan the $800,000 with interest for the fifteen 
years. 

We had a war with Spain twenty years ago. When we got the 
Philippines (or the Philippines got us) we paid Spain 
$20,000,000 for the islands. Again, the victor paid the indemnity. 

We had a war with China when the European nations began 
the process of dismembering China. The Boxers arose and bru- 
tally tried to stop it. When the disturbance was over, there came 
the indemnity. They laid on that poor, amorphous nation just 
beginning to live an indemnity of nearly half a billion dollars. 
Our share was $20,000,000. We took about $10,000,000 to 
meet our actual expenses and told China she could keep the 
rest. And China has been using those millions to send her 
students to our universities. 

Take our attitude towards Cuba. Of course, this sounds like 
bragging ; but we know perfectly well that we Americans are not 
saints. We are not saints, we are Americans. Whether or not 
it is because we have so much land we don't need any more, 
the simple, cold fact is, that we have been building up gener- 
osity in our international relations. We gave Cuba back to her- 
self twice. It is no mere accident that when war broke out, 
the Cubans were the first to come forward and stand by our 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 97 

side ; no mere accident that at this very minute a whole division 
of Filipinos, the sons of the men who fought our country, are 
being organized to fight for our country in France, with Agui- 
naldo's son one of the number. It is not an accident. It is the 
result of the democratic conception of international relations. 

It is the same with South Africa. The British know perfectly 
that there are constitutional questions that must be adjusted 
there but the Boers are being drawn into a fellowship of repre- 
sentative democracy. 

Take our whole attitude towards South America and Mexico. 
I don't know what you thought about the President's policy, but 
his wisdom should be apparent at the present time in our rela- 
tions with the South American Republics as a whole. His refusal 
to intervene in Mexico is a part of the new mass of precedents 
we are building up from the point of view of a democracy. 
And what is that attitude of mind which Great Britain and 
France and ourselves and others are building up? In brief, 
it is that, over against the German position that the weak nation 
has no rights against the strong nation, if the strong nation wants 
to use the weak nation — stands the declaration of democracy that 
the weak nation has rights, just as truly as the strong nation ; that 
it is the business of the strong nation to give justice to the weak 
nation. Over against the idea of the conquest of a nation by 
brute power stands the right of sovereignty of the weak people. 

The great issue rising before Germany at this moment is, 
whether the liberal German with his clear conception of what 
real history means shall be at least beaten or shall at last win over 
the Fatherland party that stands for the monstrous, anachronis- 
tic imperial conception of government. The answer may not be 
immediate, but it is bound to come, for there is no chance in so- 
cial evolution. The cosmic sanity that keep the stars from fight- 
ing in their courses keeps human life moving. We are not living 
in a decadent world ; we are living in an evolving world. 

There came into my office some time ago a negro who had on 
his cheek three gashes. They were the tribal marks of a primi- 
tive savage race. He had never seen a white man until he was 
eight years old, and now, less than thirty, wanting to know if he 
could take advanced courses in the Semitic languages ! Think of 
what this boy had done. He had passed the whole gamut of 
history, from primitive savagery to the university. 

Humanity is not headed towards the tribal gashes of primi- 
tive savagery. Humanity is headed for these things, for which, 
let us be humbly grateful as well as proud, we have been able to 
lay a mass of precedents on which the history of the future can 
be built. 



98 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Representative democracy is learning how to be efficient. It 
is giving itself to the task of efficiency with the enthusiasm of 
those who believe in democracy but do not believe that democracy 
means "mobocracy." It is giving itself, sometimes unconsciously, 
but none the less really, to the task of democratizing the relations 
between nations. It has a long way to go before the goal is 
reached. I hope that no goal will ever be reached in human 
progress. We want a moving goal. But we shall go forward, 
and the world will go forward. Twenty years from now, as we 
measure the advance, we shall have made I dare predict that we 
shall find that the idealism of Anglo-American representative de- 
mocracy will have flung itself out into international relations; 
that, enlarged and given the beauties of other civilizations and 
other experiences than those of the Anglo-American, it will still 
be loyal to that sacrificial conception which is the heart of true 
democracy, that it is more blessed to give justice than it is to fight 
for rights. 



THREE: BY HONORABLE GEORGE E. CHAMBERLAIN 

United States Senator 

It is a great pleasure, I assure you, to be with you again. I 
have gotten to be almost an annual pest here with this club, 
and although I am a Democrat and have sometimes feared that it 
was a case where the lion and the lamb were lying down together, 
I have never yet found myself inside the lion ! They have always 
treated me with such distinguished courtesy that, in the language 
of the British Vice Consul in my State, who, after hearing a pa- 
triotic American speech, said jocularly, "I almost feel like an 
American citizen" ; so I almost feel like a Republican when I 
come up here. 

Under the Food Administration Measure, they have meatless 
days and wheatless days, but your club does not seem to have 
any speechless days, and I sometimes feel that it would be nicer 
to come up and put my feet under your table and have a good, 
social time, rather than make a speech ; but these are times, my 
countrymen and my friends, when every true American, every 
red-blooded American, ought to be ready to say something about 
his country and its cause. And so feeling and so believing, not- 
withstanding the fact that I have been working sixteen and eigh- 
teen hours a day since the first of December, I still am willing 
to devote a little of my time to talking to my friends on a sub- 
ject in which we are all vitally and nationally and internationally 
interested. 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 99 

I do not know what you want me to talk to you about. I sup- 
pose, however, that the subject of most interest to us all is the 
question of preparedness for the fight that we are now in. Some 
of us have been talking upon this question for a good long while, 
and I think you will bear testimony to the fact that I shared 
the time here a year ago with a gentleman, a very distinguished 
New York citizen, who took the position it was not necessary 
to make any preparation for defense and that it was not neces- 
sary to be prepared to fight. 

I remember asking that distinguished gentleman, when we were 
discussing this proposition of preparedness on another occasion, 
what would have happened to France, if, when the efficient and 
well trained German Army appeared on her Western front, 
France had then occupied the position which America occupied 
at the time this war broke out, and which we in some measure — 
I say it regretfully — occupy to-day, a condition of unprepared- 
ness, what would have happened to that magnificent republic? 
His reply was that if the German Army had come to the West- 
ern front of France and found a country that was disarmed, in 
her compassion and her sympathy, she would not have under- 
taken to attack her. That is the opinion of a great many paci- 
fists to-day ; that being prepared to fight leads a country to want 
to fight and instead of avoiding difficulty, is apt to bring about 
difficulty. 

If this country had done what some of us were advocating 
three years ago, shortly after the war began ; if it had gone to 
work, as it ought to have gone to work and as it ought to do now, 
and trained her young men from sixteen to twenty-one years 
of age to fight, instead of having an untrained drafted army 
of business, commercial and professional men, absolutely unpre- 
pared, we would to-day have had a perfectly trained army, and, 
in my opinion, that very preparation on the part of America 
would have made the Teutons hesitate a long while before forc- 
ing America into this fight. 

But that appeal was disregarded. It was not heard. It was 
the voice of one crying in the wilderness, to people who had lived 
the life of ease and peace so long that they could not realize the 
necessity of getting ready to defend America ; although the fight 
is on a distant shore, they would have been prepared to have 
made America and the world safe, not only for democracy, but 
for liberty and justice and right. Although this fight is not on 
American soil, it threatens not only the liberty of the citizens on 
the continent of Europe, but it threatens as well the liberty and 
the institutions of America. 

I think the statement attributed to a prominent German officer 



100 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

that Germany would march through Belgium to France, take 
Paris, cross the English Channel and take Great Britain, and then 
seize America, compelling her to pay the indemnity that she would 
have demanded from these countries to pay for the war, was 
absolutely true from the standpoint of autocracy and militarism. 
And I have no assurance to-day that the war may not come to 
our shores yet. 

There was a time when America boasted of her isolation ; but 
that boast can no longer be made. It took longer for a force to 
travel from Washington to Petersburg during the Civil War, than 
it takes now to carry troops from America to France. The ex- 
pense was greater then than now ; and fighting was a mere child's 
play from the beginning of civiliation to the present time, as com- 
pared with the methods of warfare that have been adopted now. 
There has not been a conception in Hell itself which has not 
been seized by the Hun and put into use in the destruction of 
human life and of property as well. 

Is America to lie supinely by and say that no danger can come 
to her, because, forsooth, the Atlantic separates us from the 
immediate scenes of war, when it is absolutely true that 
the means of communication are almost automatic and instan- 
taneous, not only through the air and on the land and on the 
waters, but under the very waters themselves, and we see the hid- 
den assassin in the trenches as well as under the waters, and the 
very heavens themselves rain down missiles of destruction upon 
innocent women and children everywhere? 

Let me tell you, as was very ably presented by a distinguished 
ex-President of the United States a while ago, that you are fight- 
ing the battle of the women and children of our land just as 
well as of the men; and they are just as much interested in it 
as the men ; because America occupies no different position so 
far as her splendid women are concerned than the women and 
children of poor devastated Belgium, who were murdered in 
the very market-places of that unfortunate country. 

Arouse yourselves, my countrymen! This is not a one-man 
fight. This is the fight of America as well as the fight of the 
nations that are engaged in it on the immediate scenes of the war. 

Not only have we not enough trained men now, after ten 
months of America's part in it — we are getting trained, and we 
will be trained — but we are only training one million men or a 
little over, and God grant that that may be all that we shall need, 
but we shall probably need many million before the end comes. 
If America does her duty, she will hasten to get a million or two 
more men, and if necessary, to have more, and she will have 
them prepared to play their part in this terrible conflict. 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 101 

We have had no very definite war programme, up to this time, 
I am sorry to say. It seemed to me that when the first conflagra- 
tion was started in Europe in August, 1914, that any man who 
had any sense of proportion at all, that any man who was able 
to visualize not only our own country but the countries across the 
waters and take in the situation in those countries, must have 
realized that America must, by the very fact of her wealth and 
size, become a party to and take an active part in that fight. 

It has been with that in view that some in Congress, and 
some not in official life — and we can do nothing without having 
the people behind us — saw fit to urge our country, when the war 
first broke out, to get ready to fight. The timid and the pacifist 
said when the selective draft law was before Congress that 
America did not need to get ready ; she did not need to draft her 
men. And this for two reasons : first, that there would be volun- 
teers spring up from every section and offer their services to fight 
the battles of our country. I believe that was true, but can any 
sane man tell me why the red-blooded boys of America should be 
the first to go to the sacrifice? Why the young men of the stores 
and business houses, should go to the front, and leave behind the 
coward and the craven and the men who are too busy making 
money to want to help ? Why should these leave the coward and 
the craven at home to procreate his species and perpetuate the 
race? Why should your son, with red American blood flowing 
through his veins, offer his life upon the altar of his country and 
another gentleman's son, of equal capacity and of equal oppor- 
tunity, be allowed to remain behind and not offer that same 
service ? 

In other words why should a volunteer system continue as a 
system which spares the slackers and takes the lives of the pa- 
triotic young men. As said by another, "The casualties in the 
French Army, for instance, represent virtually a 'perpendicular' 
loss ; or, in other words, a loss of a part of each stratum, from 
the highest to the lowest, in human value to the French nation. 
On the other hand, the casualties in the British Army, under the 
voluntary system, represented a terrible 'horizontal' loss, or a loss 
of the bravest and best, a loss of human value taken from the 
highest strata of Great Britain's manhood. And so it was during 
the greater part of our Civil War, with what result to posterity 
no man can tell." 

There is no doubt that the young men would have volunteered, 
but every war has proved that in a long protracted war, you can- 
not depend on the volunteer system. There comes a time when 
the volunteer system is insufficient to fill the depleted ranks in the 
army. It was the same in the Civil War, Washington is author- 



102 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

ity for the saying that patriotism alone cannot save a country. 
There must be some compulsion somewhere ; and every man, 
woman and child must learn to realize the obligations of citizen- 
ship, that the benefits of citizenship carry with them the obliga- 
tion of service when the country needs that service. That was 
one argument that was made for the draft law. I think it was 
that distinguished citizen, Mr. William Jennings Bryan, who said 
you could get out a million citizens that would spring to arms in 
twenty-four hours. But, oh, at what a sacrifice ; what a slaughter 
would follow their actual engagement ! Put one German division 
of thirty thousand men against them and they would melt like 
snow before the morning sun. To send an untrained force, how- 
ever large, against a trained force would simply mean death to 
those whom we sent to do a duty that ought to rest on all. 

But it was urged there was another and a second reason why 
there should be no selective draft law, that conscription was viola- 
tive of the traditions of America. The argument has been made 
from Revolutionary times down to the present, that military 
service ought to be rendered only by volunteers. Washington 
differed from that view as have all distinguished military men. 
Washington took the position that men ought to be drafted. He 
found, early in the Revolutionary days, that he could not depend 
on volunteers. The Continental Congress did undertake a draft 
law, but they had no power to enforce it. 

Kentucky, in its practical wisdom and foresight, undertook 
to enforce a draft law, but it was ineffective, because it didn't 
place the responsibility on all alike. The fact is that there 
has not been a prominent military character since the founda- 
tion of the republic who has not held that it would be neces- 
sary in a protracted war to conscript the young men of the 
country. 

I do not look upon the draft as a disgrace ; the registration 
list is an honor roll; it is a certificate of fitness, a certificate of 
strength and virility, and the certificate that the drafted man gets 
is a badge of honor telling the world that he has been called as 
a fit subject for the service of his country. 

How has it worked ? Take it in my own State, and it is true 
of other States. Acting on the theory that to be taken under the 
selective draft was a disgrace to a man, many volunteered. They 
did not want to wait for the draft, and we had to draft only about 
five or six hundred men in order to fill Oregon's quota, and if 
we had just waited a few days longer, we would not have had to 
draft any. 

What was the result ? While the draft law takes one man in 
ten according to population for the service of his country, the 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 103 

volunteer system sometimes took ten out of ten in some communi- 
ties without regard to population, with the result that agricultural 
life was disrupted ; industrial life was interfered with ; all the 
young men on the farms in certain places left to volunteer for the 
service of their country, with the result that agricultural life was 
paralyzed. In industrial life many young men laid aside the chisel 
and the hammer and the mallet and went to volunteer in the 
service of their country, with the result that industrial life was 
paralyzed. Young men in the employ of public utilities laid down 
their implements of everyday life and went to the front, and they 
have not been able to fill their places yet, although the gallant 
young ladies have gone out to the farms and tried to fill the de- 
pleted ranks so far as they could do so. I presume the same is 
true in every State in this Union. No law more just ever graced 
the statute books of this country than that which compels its 
citizens, men and women, to realize that as one of the duties 
incident to citizenship is the duty to serve the country in any 
emergency which confronts it. There is no higher duty that any 
man or woman can be called upon to perform. So, we have 
departed from tradition with reference to the draft law, and it 
was not an easy measure to get through because of old time pre- 
judice. Tradition, my friends, is oftentimes more honored in the 
breach than in the observance. 

You of New York have departed from tradition in the last 
six months, and have conferred upon the women of your State the 
right to vote, and whether your action was right or wrong makes 
no difference. This is a country where the majority rules, and 
whenever the majority says that the women ought to be enfran- 
chised, then that right is theirs, no matter what the minority may 
say; but you have departed from tradition, just the same. 

Oregon, that splendid State from which I hail, has violated 
nearly all the traditions in governmental policy. The difference 
between the Western man and the Eastern man is that the West- 
ern man is willing to try anything; if it is good he holds to it, 
and if he does not like it he gets rid of it ! We have conferred 
upon the people of Oregon the right to enact laws, and on the 
other hand, to veto laws which the Legislature passes. Conserva- 
tives said that would destroy the civil and political institutions of 
the State. It has been the making of Oregon. The State has 
grown in wealth and population. Long ago we gave the women 
the right to vote. They have purified the State politically and 
socially. We are called the "legislative experimental State of the 
Union." It may be so, but we find the staid old State of Massa- 
chusetts and other States falling in line, following the example 
of Oregon. It was a distinguished statesman from Massachusetts 



104 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

who once said to me, "You don't hesitate to violate any tradition 
when you think that by so doing you will strengthen the country's 
stand among the nations of the world." And so we do not. 

When we come to talk to you about universal military train- 
ing, they tell us that is contrary to tradition. I say violate it! 
Take your young men from sixteen or eighteen to twenty-one and 
train them. You need not put them into service until they are 
twenty-one. Train them from the time they are sixteen until 
they are twenty-one, and in three years you will have an army 
that can conquer any nation on the face of the earth. You will 
not by such course have done any violence to your civic or political 
duties. Let us do that, because, as has been said, so forcibly 
by another this very afternoon, America, unless she has a peace 
that is brought about by victory, will have a dishonorable peace, 
no matter who makes it. 

Now we need the help of you people; you business men of 
New York. We need the people of the country to get behind 
this movement. You cannot remain in your counting rooms and 
in your offices and in your club rooms, and bring about the ac- 
complishment of any great purpose. You have got to get behind 
it with all your power ; you have got to give the Representatives 
of New York in the Congress of the United States to understand 
that the man who is not for America is against America, and 
retire him. They are doing this in some States and they will do 
it in others. There is danger now, my fellow-citizens, that the 
pacifist and German propaganda which has been flooding some 
parts of this country may defeat men who stand for prepared- 
ness, and, if all happened to be defeated who stand for prepared- 
ness, then God help America ! 

So that if you believe in preparing our country to fight, you 
ought to get out behind this movement. Write to those who 
represent you and appeal to the legislators as well as to the voters 
of the different States for their assistance in fighting to a suc- 
cessful conclusion the greatest war in the history of the 
world. 

I may say to you, and I think I speak knowingly, that what 
I have attempted to do in Congress to assist in this war, has 
not been done as a Democrat ; it has been attempted to be done 
as an American citizen. I have had men say to me that the in- 
vestigation that the Military Affairs Committee of the Senate 
was engaged in was wrong in this crisis. Some say "You dis- 
credit your own administration." Others say, "You imperil the 
chances of our country for success." 

As to the first charge, if that were the only consideration, I 
would say "Amen," I do not care about such charge, because 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 105 

if there is anything wrong with the party to which I happen to 
belong, the best friend of the administration is the one who will 
show inefficiencies wherever they happen to exist. 

As to the second proposition, I say that it doesn't tend to 
injure our country to insist upon honesty and efficiency. The 
fact is, the American people are denying themselves everything. 
They are taxing themselves as they never were taxed before. 
They are yielding to orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the 
Army and Navy, sometimes with a protest, but in the last analysis, 
with willingness to do whatever is necessary to win ; and the men 
and women who are making these sacrifices are entitled to know 
that the money that they are putting up and the sacrifices they 
are making in blood and in treasure are being made in the interest 
of the American people. 

Now, that is what the Senate Committee is trying to do, and 
that is what, with the help and assistance of the American people, 
that Committee is going to do, no matter what happens. Already, 
work of all kinds is speeding up. Inefficients in every department 
are gradually stepping aside. Unfortunately some who have been 
proven inefficient, instead of being retired to positions of innocu- 
ous desuetude, are being elevated to higher places. Fortunately, 
they are being put in places where they cannot do very much 
harm. What America wants in this crisis is young blood. She 
wants fighting blood. What America wants is efficiency in every 
department, and men at the head who will take inefficiency by 
the neck and shake it out of the administration. England tried 
it with success, and we are going to do it. And if we fail to do it, 
the American people are going to know where the responsibility 
for it rests. 

There is a lack of coordination and a lack of efficiency in the 
War Department and the present administration is not entirely to 
blame for it. I am not criticizing the administration ; I am criticiz- 
ing a system which has come down to us from the fathers. The 
principal trouble is, that decisions of solicitors of bureaus, con- 
trollers of one department or another, auditors of the different 
branches of the government, have rolled up a ball of red tape so 
intricate that when one starts out to do anything and under- 
takes to unroll this ball of red tape, it is like getting through a 
labyrinthine maze. 

I saw a paper the other day that might have been answered 
by the first man to whom it was presented. It had twenty-one 
endorsements on it. It was referred to one officer who put an 
endorsement on it. It was sent to another department where 
it received another endorsement, and so on, until the twentieth 
endorsement simply stated that the first endorser was correct, 



106 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

and when it finally got down to the twenty-first endorsement, the 
statement was simply this : "You are right." 

We are trying to cut tape that has been in process of enroll- 
ment for a hundred years or more. And how are we going to 
do it? By simply applying the knife fearlessly and effectually. 

Here we have this peculiar condition: there were different 
bureaus in the War Department bidding against each other for 
supplies. There were different bureaus in the Navy Department 
bidding against each other for the same supplies ; in the same field, 
at the same time, for the same commodities ! What is the inevi- 
table result? Higher prices and unequal distribution. If there 
was not enough to go around, there ought to have been and ought 
to be now a coordinating agency with power to take all of a com- 
modity and then distribute it according to the needs of the dif- 
ferent departments. There is no other way to get proper 
results. 

Now, the Military Committee, as the result of its hearings, 
has undertaken to put the supply departments of the whole Gov- 
ernment under one responsible head to be appointed by the Presi- 
dent who is to be known as the Munitions Director and has pre- 
pared a bill for that purpose. He can utilize any or all of the 
present organizations of all the bureaus and departments — all or 
any or none of them, just as he sees fit — for coordinating the 
purchases of supplies of all kinds; but in the last analysis, that 
man is to be the responsible head, and then if anything goes 
wrong, the people can put their fingers on the man who is re- 
sponsible for it. That is what we are going to try to do. 

Let me illustrate by one simple instance the evils that should 
be remedied. Take the ducking that is used in large quantities 
by the Army and the Navy. When the supply was short, it hap- 
pened that both the Army and the Navy needed it, but the Navy, 
which had a better organization than the Army, purchased the 
entire supply, paying whatever price was asked. I do not mean 
to suggest that they paid an unfair price, but to show that under 
a bad system one branch of the Government got it all, while 
the Army had to go without. They have had to organize the in- 
dustry in this particular commodity, in order that, instead of three 
million yards, we could manufacture eighty-five million yards, 
which is necessary for all these departments, and see to its proper 
distribution. 

If we had one responsible head to take up the subject of buy- 
ing and distributing these supplies, we would get better and 
speedier results. 

But the Committee has gone further than that. I do not know 
where we are going to land, but we are going to try, for as a 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 107 

business proposition, it seemed to be right. We are going to 
report out a bill in a few days creating a War Cabinet. 

I want you to know that these measures have not been pre- 
pared on the spur of the moment. We have been working on 
them, some of us, eighteen hours a day for many days, and have 
been basing our action on the experience of other countries in 
coordinating the efforts of the Government and planning for a 
prosecution of the War. 

Great Britain and France were groping in the dark for the 
first years of the war; and, as a result of their effort to create 
an efficient war programme, they created War Cabinets. Some 
of the members hold portfolios, while others do not, and they 
devote all of their time to formulating plans for the future. 
And so we have this in view without in any way authorizing the 
War Cabinet to interfere in the least with the constitutional 
powers of the President, but making it under him and subject 
to his direction. 

The business man who sits down in his office and does not 
look forward and arrange for the future had better get out of 
business while he has any capital left. He must look months 
ahead and provide for expansion and the manufacturer of goods 
for the western and other markets must make estimates for not 
only six months ahead, but a year ahead if deliveries are not to 
be made until the expiration of that time. Why not apply busi- 
ness methods to the administration of governmental affairs? 
Great Britain and France had to come to it in order to get effi- 
ciency. America has been groping in the dark for the last ten 
months, with able enough heads, but with no responsible head 
for coordinating the war programme. Now, America must fol- 
low in the footsteps of her allies in order to coordinate the in- 
strumentalities of government, and plan for future emergencies. 
If not by the system here suggested then in some other effective 
way and that too by legislation. 

I hope I shall not be guilty of treason if I suggest to you that 
in my humble opinion, there was no need for the coal shortage 
now upon us if a plan had been mapped out six months ago. I 
do know this, that when the discussion about coal came up here 
some time last summer, it was brought to the attention of every 
man in the country, because it was printed in the newspapers that 
coal production was increasing up to a certain point, when one 
administrative branch of the Government fixed a price after con- 
ference with the operators which seemed to be satisfactory. Now, 
that price didn't stop production. The chart showed that there 
was still an ascending line of production ; but, when another de- 
partment reduced the price to a point where it could not be 



108 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

produced except at a loss, the line of production commenced to 
descend, with the result that there was no coal produced and an 
inevitable shortage such as we now have followed. 

I sustained the action of the President and the Fuel Adminis- 
tration in regard to the use of coal. I was one of the nineteen 
Senators who did so. Why? I did not think it was a wise order, 
but it developed in the course of the investigation before the 
Military Affairs Committee that there were 127 ships in the port 
of New York that could not carry supplies to the Allies because 
they did not have coal. I had no other information about it, but 
I proposed to put life above property so long as we have boys in 
the front in Europe, and wanted to see those ships supplied at all 
hazards. 

One of the functions of this War Cabinet which we propose is 
to map out programs for the future, so that if there is likely 
to be a shortage in the production of artillery, ordnance and guns, 
or anything else necessary for carrying on the war, provision may 
be made to meet it and for the proper distribution of production. 

Every man can make estimates for the future. We have not 
had any reliable estimates yet for six months or a year in ad- 
vance, but before another year passes by, I predict that efforts 
will be made not only to estimate with practical certainty what the 
needs of our country are likely to be, but how distribution of 
all necessities shall be made, and in addition thereto, there will 
be some method adopted for coordinating governmental as well as 
industrial life. 

I want to say for our distinguished President that in this 
crisis he is the Premier of all the world in ability. His statements 
are looked upon in Europe as the statements, and properly so, 
of a very great man; but neither he nor any other one man can 
take all of these problems and accomplish all that is expected. 
There must be responsible heads of his own choosing under him, 
to do what is necessary to be done in order to see America safely 
through this war. I am not a pessimist, but I know the 
policies of war, the implements of war, the methods of 
warfare, all may change and all do change ; but rules of strategy 
never change. We see the most efficient military power on the 
face of the globe following a well known rule of strategy, that of 
concentrating its forces on what it thinks are the weak points of 
the Allies, and America, if she would save her Allies, must get 
on the ground with the men and money and means to success- 
fully help them at these supposedly weak points. 

If there is any country on the face of the globe to which 
America is indebted, it is that country on whose soil the battles 
are waging. America ought, without hesitation and as quickly 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 109 

as possible, to go to her relief with millions of men. When 
Washington through our representatives appealed to France in 
1 78 1, and told her that he did not have money to pay the men 
who were hauling supplies to his army, and asked for assistance, 
France gave the money, not only in hundreds of thousands, but in 
millions, more money than we are taxing ourselves now as com- 
pared with the difficulty of obtaining money and the scarcity of 
wealth, as compared with our own day and generation. Not 
only did she do this, but she sent Rochambeau with five or six 
thousand trained soldiers to America and these landed at New- 
port after seventy-seven days of tremendous suffering, and dodg- 
ing the British fleet, to do or to die for America. 

And now, while it took them seventy-seven days to get over 
here and they came, and it takes us ten or twelve days at the out- 
side to get our men over there, why, in God's name, cannot we 
reciprocate the splendid work of France? But that is not all. 
Cornwallis was concentrating his troops at Yorktown. He was 
confronted by Lafayette with his tatterdemalion and barefooted 
colonists. The British commander was at New York getting 
ready to embark his troops, to supplement the force that Corn- 
wallis had at Yorktown, and Washington called on Rochambeau 
to come to his relief. He started on the long march from New- 
port to join Washington's forces at Yorktown, and successfully 
accomplished the junction. 

While this was going on, De Grasse, the French Admiral, who 
was at the Bermudas, with positive instructions to convoy mer- 
chant ships from Bermuda to France, violated these orders, came 
into Chesapeake Bay with ships and men and prevented Corn- 
wallis from escaping. Washington himself later gave it as his 
opinion that but for the relief that France gave in the war of the 
Revolution, America might not have been able to achieve her 
Independence. The debt of gratitude that America owes to 
France should and will be repaid to her in money and blood. 

America is getting ready to do it. America is going to do it. 
But America must speed up the programme she has in progress, 
and that too at the earliest possible moment, and every American 
citizen owes it to himself, to his country and to his loyal Allies 
across the water to do all in his power to speed the program 
and to accomplish some results, so that America can play her part 
in this great war that is threatening not only republics and em- 
pires, but threatening civilization itself. 



110 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 



FOUR: BY HONORABLE JULIUS KAHN 

Member of Congress 

It is a surprising thing, when one begins to study the present 
situation, how this country has drifted along all these years, as if 
the people were living in a fool's paradise. In the Spanish- 
American War we had some experiences that ought to have taught 
Americans some lessons; but we went on in a haphazard way, 
making money and money and money, and we didn't care about 
our own country and its preparedness. 

What is the crying need of the hour? Ships. Ships, to trans- 
port our men and our supplies across the ocean. I can remember 
in 1907 when some of us were making an effort to produce ships. 
We were defeated by just one vote. We tried to put through a 
Mail Subsidy Law. We had subsidized four ships, if you remem- 
ber, before the Spanish-American War, and when the war came 
those ships were converted into auxiliary cruisers, and they did 
magnificent work, in conjunction with the navy, for the American 
arms. In 1907 we presented a concrete proposition for the estab- 
lishment of seven routes upon the Atlantic and the Pacific to 
South America and to the Orient. Between five and six million 
dollars a year would have been expended in mail subsidies if that 
law had been enacted. It would have cost us, up to the present 
time, about sixty million dollars, but we would have had thirty 
or forty ships. And now we are appropriating one billion dollars 
to build some three thousand and five thousand ton ships that will 
probably have to go on the scrap-heap when the war is over. 

I suppose the gentlemen who voted against the ship subsidy 
or mail subsidy at that time prided themselves on the fact that 
they saved the American people five million dollars a year ! That 
is the way they say it. Oh, how expensive, how awfully ex- 
pensive, that five million dollars a year has become! If we had 
spent that money, we should be sending our men and our supplies 
in an undiminished stream to the other side. 

Are we going to learn any lessons from this war? In the 
Committee on Military Affairs of which I am a member — and I 
don't suppose I violate any confidence — we have men who really 
are speaking about disarmament and the return to our former 
policy of drifting when this war is over. All honor to Senator 
Chamberlain for the work that he has done ! 

You know, we do things in a funny way out west. The Sena- 
tor comes from a Republican State. He has been elected by Re- 
publican votes and he is a Democrat! In my District, when I 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 111 

first ran for Congress, I had 8,000 Democratic majority. At the 
election of last November, or a year ago, we polled 65,000 votes. 
I ran on the Republican ticket and got 52,000 out of the 65,000. 
So that, a good many Democrats out there voted for this Republi- 
can, but I have always said, ever since we got into this war, 
this is the time when party politics must be subordinated to 
Americanism. We must all be Americans first and partisans 
afterwards. 

We have many great problems, as the Senator pointed out. 
We need the backing of the people at home to carry them out. 
The boys in the field must understand that the American people 
are behind them. 

I can readily see a condition that would be very unfortunate 
for this country. The pacifist, the propagandist, is altogether too 
much in evidence in these trying times. The men who are sowing 
seeds of sedition and treason, the enemies within, ought to be 
brought up with a round turn. If the people here, if some people 
in these United States, who, in the days of peace, have had all the 
opportunities which our country gives, are not willing to stand 
behind it with heart and soul in this great struggle, in Heaven's 
name, let them get out of the country. We don't want any of 
that kind here. There is no room for them and there should be 
no room for them in this country. 

Congress will be called upon to legislate for our armies and 
for the navy. Watch the votes of your Representatives. See 
that those who represent you stand solidly and firmly for Ameri- 
can rights. That is what we are fighting for, in the final 
analysis. 

This is the fifth time that we have gone to war to defend the 
very rights we are defending to-day. Americans don't seem to 
realize that almost before we were ten years old as a nation, be- 
fore we had passed our first decade, we were fighting naval bat- 
tles — no land battles but naval battles — even with France that had 
been our friend and ally during the Revolution, because she un- 
dertook to do the very things that Germany is doing to us to- 
day. She seized our ships ; she sank our ships ; she drowned our 
people; she made them prisoners; and, although we recognized 
all that we owed her, Washington himself came from his seclusion 
at Mount Vernon and took command of the American force, 
ready to lay down his life if need be for American rights. 

We fought that war for two years, and then we made peace 
with Napoleon who followed the Directorate and became First 
Consul. France recognized our rights on the high seas, and we 
have never had any trouble since with that great country. 

In 1801, the very following year, we fought Tripoli, Tunis 



112 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

and Morocco. Congress declared war because they sank our 
ships ; they seized our crews and sold them into slavery ; and we 
wouldn't stand for it. We sent our fleets and we fought that war 
for four years before we made peace. Pope Pius VII, who was 
then on the Papal throne, said that America in those four years 
had done more for human liberty and human rights than all the 
Christian nations of Europe put together; so that, the present 
war is not the first time that we are fighting for humanity. That 
war continued for four years, and the Barbary pirates recognized 
our rights on the seas. 

Then, in 1812, we fought England the second time. We 
fought her because she seized our men on our merchant vessels. 
We fought that war for two years. It is not necessary to recite 
the details of it now, but we made a treaty with her and since 
that time she has never interfered with our rights. 

In 181 5 we fought our fourth war for those rights at sea. We 
fought Algeria. Commodore Decatur was sent by the President 
across the ocean with a fleet of ships to defend the American na- 
tion against the Algerian pirates, Decatur, the man who said, 
"Our country, in her intercourse with foreign nations may she 
always be right ; but our country, right or wrong." And we de- 
feated the Algerians and we made a treaty of peace with her 
under which she agreed that American ships could go anywhere 
on the high seas where they had a right, under international law, 
to go. 

And then for 102 years, we had no further trouble. Our 
ships had the right to go everywhere until on the 31st of January, 
1917, the Imperial Government of Germany served notice on us 
that on the very next day, on the first of February, she would 
ruthlessly sink any American vessel that dared to go beyond a 
certain line on the high seas which she, herself, drew, and beyond 
which line, under international law, we had an absolute right to 
go. She would ruthlessly destroy such ships, and perchance 
drown those aboard. 

We didn't declare war, even then. The people of the Ameri- 
can nation have always been slow to enter into war. We did what 
we did in the French situation. We sent the German Ambassador 
home and we recalled our own. Congress was then in session. 
The session adjourned on the 4th of March by limitation. Con- 
gress went home, and there was no declaration of war. When 
we had been gone about two weeks, Germany carried out her 
threat. She sank our ships and she drowned our people, and no 
red-blooded American citizen was willing to stand by after that. 
We were ready to fight, and we have got to fight to lick the 
enemy. There must be no half-hearted business about it. Our 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 113 

victory, as the Senator said, has got to be absolute and com- 
plete. If we don't attain that kind of a victory, the German 
propagandists in the Latin-American Republics, in my opinion, 
will stir up such strife and such hatred and such animus against 
Americans that we will have constant trouble with the very na- 
tions that ought to be our allies for all time. We can see what 
they have been doing; we know what they have been doing; the 
very things that I spoke about. 

About these ships which we needed : Who defeated that legis- 
lation? It all comes to us now, when we think back about it. 
At that time the agent of the Hamburg- American Line right here 
in this city printed arguments right in your daily papers in this 
city, why that law should not be written upon our statute books. 
Many men in Congress took his arguments to defeat the law. 
We can see why he wrote those arguments. We can see now 
why he printed those letters. He had visions. He could look 
a long way ahead into the future ; and unfortunately, the Ameri- 
can statesman has not often had mental vision. 

There are only two great men in this country that I can recall 
just at this moment who had the foresight, prescience, to look into 
the future. One of them was your own great statesman from 
this State, William H. Seward. And so, when he bought Alaska, 
they referred to it as "Seward's Folly," "Seward's Polar Bear 
Garden." Great Scott! Alaska has paid for itself to the Union 
time and time again, and the wisdom of your Seward is now 
thoroughly appreciated by every American. 

And then, we had a man in the west who had vision, who had 
foresight, who realized what a great country this could become 
with that great western territory. I refer to Benton of Missouri. 
You know what Daniel Webster said : "What do we want of that 
vest, worthless area, that region of whirlwinds of dust and deserts 
of sand, of cactus and prairie dogs?" Well, we have almost ex- 
terminated our prairie dogs, and the cactus in the western states 
has given way to blossoming gardens and magnificent orchards, 
and a population of loyal, patriotic, warm-hearted Americans in- 
habit those states that were thus derided at one time in our coun- 
try's history. 

We have got to have vision, and the statesman to-day who is 
not willing to make provision for the future safety of this country, 
as the Senator said to you, ought to be forever relegated to the 
obscurity which he would much better grace than a seat in the 
House of Representatives or the Senate. 

I have taken up too much of your time, but I want to say to 
you that it has been a great pleasure for me to come here for a 
lew minutes to meet the men who are doing things in this club. 



ill ONE HUNDRED VFK CENT AMERICAN 

i 

trine* They ate 
t : Ik 

s on the 

; en ■■ you 

-. oi \. 
i books oi I h Republic - 



FIVE PRINCI I AZAROVICH 

/ . s 

;. nest - Serbia tm a simple Set! 

... . . 

... t same, as ] 

Voa se< ces s ght at 1 

Napoleon s French A 
... ethis< ... 

- ■ - ■ ■ •..-.> ,v:r.c to this cc i 

e of mys* 
spec 5 I unders k Mis 

. occa- 

i gathering; and one nembers 

rase Goon - - ne to 

it I s evening ik it 

\s 

- said this < 

- . >c - else's ghts — too 
is s . . s 

I c : \ D . ■ - - 

soc c . 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 115 

I mentioned yesterday a very interesting thing. I must tell 
you, I have been connected in Europe from [894 011 to 1905 with 
the Macedonian Revolutionary Commit tee-,, having been there as 
their representative, and really, I was the "boss of the show" as 
you, in good Manhattanese, express it. During that time I had 
dealings with the Foreign Offices in Europe and made quite an 
enormous amount of acquaintances with people who are very 
well informed. Some of those people sometimes come from the 
under-current. It is a secret service. 

In the beginning of 1914 I met a man here who just came 
across to New York, and the man — I knew him in Europe and I 
knew him as a man extraordinarily well informed — told me the 
following story: He told me that the British Secret Service a 
few weeks before had made a huge haul of interesting corre- 
spondence in China, and that the story contained in that corre- 
spondence, which not only was a correspondence of the moment 
but stretched back to years back, up to, I believe, 1904 or 1905, 
dwelt with preparations and plans and exchange of ideas between 
Germany and another power for this war. It dwelt with and 
showed how, during that time, the treatment, at least, the rela- 
tions, between the countries, how Germany, especially Germany, 
through its diplomatic representatives, tried to keep England out 
of this conflict. There idea was to first go over on the Balkans, 
because that is the door to the East ; then to throw down France 
and Russia and Italy, and when that is done, when that has been 
accomplished in Europe, and one central power erected in Europe, 
then to tackle Great Britain and this country. 

In 1914, before the outbreak of this war, it was intended to 
include this country and to tackle this country and to conquer it. 
At that time, that same gentleman told me that — now, what I 
will tell you will perhaps surprise you, but I am not a pro-Ger- 
man; my poor country has suffered enough from them not to 
make me a pro-German and not to admire Kaiser Bill — but the 
story which was told is this: that from 1913 on, Austria and a 
certain party in Germany tried to force Germany to support 
Austria in her war-aggressive policy ; that it was Emperor Wil- 
liam who refused, saying "Germany is not yet prepared." He 
thought that Germany would not be prepared to undertake any 
kind of a world war before 1916. You must know it is the old 
question between the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs. If the 
Hehenzollerns would have been allowed to begin the war at their 
date, 1916, the Hapsburgs would have been wiped out. If the 
1914 date was chosen, with Germany's preparation not quite com- 
plete, and Austria ready, after her preparation in the Balkan 
Wars, it was believed in Germany that Austria would be the upper 



116 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

dog in the combination. The one man in the way in Austria, 
that is, dangerous to the dynastic ambitions of the Hapsburgs, 
was Francis Ferdinand, because he had come in 1913 to the con- 
clusion that it might be possible by evolutionary means to solve 
the Eastern question, and by revolutionary means in Russia to 
solve the Russian question and get Poland and Serbia under 
Austrian rule. 

He told me at that time that the assassination of Francis 
Ferdinand had been decided upon, not only because he was in the 
way of the aggressive policy of the Hapsburg family, but because 
his assassination would be the one means to throw Emperor Wil- 
liam into the war. 

And he told a lot of stories further of what this correspon- 
dence contains. 

If I remember back to 1891, in 1891 I had been at that time 
delegated to the great General Staff of the Austrian Army for 
service with them, and in our hands came for study a document, 
a memorandum of the Reichstag in Berlin, made for the use of 
the Minister of Foreign Affairs. This is a yearly memorandum 
which is prepared in a kind of routine way, but this time that 
memorandum was considered to be a model of that kind of work, 
and it was given to us to study. 

This memorandum outlined the military resources of Germany 
in case of war, the political condition which could be counted on 
if they could interfere with the conduct of any war. Then it 
began to sum up in review the same things for each of the other 
countries with which any political difficulties may arise. France 
was mentioned, and for France the following was said: Since 
1870 when there was introduced in France the Military Obliga- 
tory Service Law, the French army had been improving, and was 
at that time, 1891, at the highest point of proficiency. At that 
time the Chief of Staff was Sleicher, who submitted to the Chan- 
cellor of the Empire a warning to be very cautious in his policy 
and his relations with France, and to avoid for years to come at 
least, any friction which might lead to an incident which could be 
followed by a declaration of war. Then came a rider which is 
interesting and the rider was a review of the French political con- 
dition and latent opposing political opinions. Then it also re- 
ferred to the curious condition in France before 1870, where the 
army during the Empire had been more or less put aside as a 
kind of a show piece, and it went on to say : "To-day the French 
Army has become the pride of the nation, and it might be possible 
and it is suggested to the Chancellor of the Empire on the Busi- 
ness of Foreign Affairs of Germany, to use these political latent 
antagonisms, to use them, to work them up, and if possible, to 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 117 

involve the army with them, so as to estrange the nation from 
the army." 

That was in 1891, and in 1901 the French Army as 
a fighting force scarcely existed, as an efficient righting force. 
The men were held, but you know what happened at the outbreak 
of the war? The French Army, the men, were equipped with 
shoes which had been acquired and bought in 1871 and 1872, 
and from that moment were in the magazines. 

Before beginning this war, slowly, everywhere, propaganda 
such as that included in that memorandum, had been sown every- 
where, all over the countries which were destined to be the antag- 
onists of the Central Powers. If you go a little bit deeper — take 
simply the Russian Revolution — now, the gentleman, the Dean 
of the University of Chicago, spoke of Bolshevikism. To pro- 
nounce Bolshevikism even in the same breath as the western ideas 
of the social fabric is stretching the word a little bit. You under- 
stand that in Russia and with us in the Balkans, in Serbia, that in- 
dividualism has never been a conscious force among the people. 
We have always been practically cooperative and practically com- 
munistic. The basis of our village communities, of our working- 
men's unions, is cooperative and communistic, and the same is 
true in Russia. The very basis of the Russian community is a 
communinistic affair, and if you have five workingmen in Russia 
from five different villages, meeting at one cross-point, and they 
should all be carpenters, those men will form a workmen's union 
and they will go to seek work in common. If only two men are 
used of that union, well, the pay of those two men will suffice to 
pay the five. 

Since 1861 in Russia a form of evolution has slowly worked 
itself out. You had fought a great war in 1861-1864, really on 
two principles, that is, the federal and confederate principle, states 
rights and central authority. Here you have exactly the same. 
The whole Russian fabric from 1861 on was absolutely separate. 
Between the self-elected judges to the Zemstov there was the 
Federal Agent which was the central government. This was by 
reason of the increase of population which became an economic 
question, of which outside interference took charge. 

The idealism of the Russian common man was excited and the 
program given him in Bolshevikism will not remain in Russia. 
It will calm and settle down. That is a phase. A firm structure 
will be constituted when the dream passes over, but here in this 
country, in England and everywhere, money is their god. You 
were the agents for the revolution in Russia. I was for the 
evolution and for the changing of certain things in Russia. 

The same men, the same money, which furnished the Russian 



118 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Revolution, which paid for the Russian Revolution, is to-day 
working and has been working in France. Here it is the same. 
You have pacifism first and the I. W. W., and all the other forms 
which are not legitimate. You see, even socialism can become 
legitimate to a certain point, and there are other movements which 
are legitimate. But there are movements of that kind, like the 
People's Council, which are not legitimate. They are outside of 
any legitimate democratic development, because they only tend 
to destruction. Any fool, any child, can destroy; a child could 
put fire to this building ; but it took an engineer and an architect 
to build it up. And in this country, I have made it my task, I look 
about, knowing the mettle of the enemy, as having had the oc- 
casion to study in his war schools, and then having had the oc- 
casion from 1894 until this day to be considered by Austria- 
Hungary to be its bitterest enemy. You have only to read 
my books which I have written, published in this country by 
Scribners. If you will read them, and aside from those books, 
criticisms published here in the newspapers, in which I am told 
that I am presumptuous and impertinent and bumptious, and I 
don't know what else, to dare to speak of the great Hapsburg 
monarchy in the way as I do, if you will read these you will 
be able to follow the trend. 

It will interest you, perhaps, that the man who has been 
charged by the Austrian Government to gather up the last threads 
and the last documents for the Revolutionary organization who 
overthrew Russia, in favor, not for any democratic reform in 
Russia, but to facilitate the conquest of Russia and its destruction 
and to facilitate that great dream, that is, the accomplishment of 
that great dream of world domination, that man is in this country 
at present. He was pointed out to me by a countryman of 
mine who knew him personally and who had been in Austria 
and had come as a refugee here and knew exactly where he 
is; that man is here in this country. Up to now I haven't even 
heard that this man had been watched by the Secret Service. 

Another matter I will only touch. There is a very insidious 
campaign here. The first one is to find fault with England, that 
is, make it out that the moment the war is at an end, you will 
have to come into conflict with Great Britain. There have been 
certain articles printed in this country, very insidious. It is not 
on the surface, and especially is it interesting because it was 
Great Britain who had defeated the success of this war in the 
beginning, because, if Great Britain had not entered into the 
war, — the Austrian Ambassador in London did his best to prevent 
Great Britain from entering that war — France, Russia and the 
rest would have long ago been defeated. England would have 



DEMOCRACY IN THE PRESENT CRISIS 119 

had her turn and you would have had your turn here. Now, we 
have Great Britain to thank, and especially at this moment, be- 
cause her fleet has kept the Germans back from the shore. Great 
Britain with her army in France is helping the valiant French 
army hold the line until you are ready to come for your own home 
defense. 

Already you can see the trail of red, already you can see the 
trail coming and beginning to poison your minds, with one intent, 
so that men should be convinced it would be better to make peace 
in the present dark hour. You must make your minds up the 
victory will not be here immediately. Before you hear of a vic- 
tory, you will hear that your own troops have got a confounded 
strong licking. That does not mean that they are not brave. 
They are untried. I speak as a soldier. They are untried men, 
and have before them tried men. What it means you have no 
idea. We consider in Europe an army to be battle-ready when an 
army has twenty-five years' life back of it of organization. You 
can't ask from your troops, so fine, so brave, so willing, they may 
be, you can't ask to have that smooth working, and you have to 
expect some hard hits first; but don't let those hard hits dis- 
courage you and lead you to make an immature peace. If that 
peace is made, then you pay the piper, and so, don't be afraid and 
don't think that you are fighting anybody else's fight than your 
own; and make your mind up as being men that debts in your 
business will come, situations where you look out and say, well, 
is it better for me to close up or go to the wall, or tide over ? I 
must not be afraid of anything; I must say, if the break must 
come, I am honest of purpose, I am honest to the men with whom 
I deal ; but I must win out. And that must be your will. 



FOURTH DISCUSSION 

JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH, I918 
VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 



ONE: BY HONORABLE WILLIAM H. SKAGGS 

One of the encouraging features of the present distressing 
situation, which I have observed during the few months last past, 
is that the American people are keen to get information. It is 
well that we are making progress along this line, because it is 
important that we understand, not only the vital issues involved in 
this mighty conflict, but that we also understand the history, the 
purposes and the methods of the people with whom we are at 
war. You have heard it said that in the beginning of the Christian 
Era, God pronounced a curse on mankind. If that be true, the 
German people, for two thousand years, have furnished evidence 
of that anathema. 

I shall not speak this afternoon touching my personal opinions 
or conclusions. I shall limit my remarks to excerpts from his- 
tory, which, in my opinion, form the strongest indictment that 
could be made against the German nation or the German people. 
The German spy system and bureau of propaganda were organ- 
ized in this country, as in other countries, before the beginning 
of the present atrocious world war. Each was thorough and 
efficient in its work, and each has been a menace to the life of 
this nation for more than three years. 

One phase of German propaganda, plausible and effective in 
its dangerous subterfuge, has been the assertion that the develop- 
ment of German industries and the expansion of German com- 
merce had aroused the jealousy and apprehension of her rivals 
in world trade, England in particular. And it has been charged 
that her unsuccessful competitors had made war on Germany 
for the purpose of destroying a dangerous rival. It could be 
easily shown that these charges are not true. I speak advisedly, 
with due appreciation of the force of my words and all that they 
mean, when I say that Germany has utterly failed in open and 
legitimate competition and that her success has been due- largely to 
her cunning and her corrupt and unsafe business methods. But 
this phase of Germanism is not for the present discussion. 

The issues in this war are not, primarily, economic, nor are 

123 



124 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

they of late development. They are social and political, and 
they come within the broad scope of moral questions, and are, 
therefore, fundamental. They are as old as civilization. If the 
issues were economic, the outcome of industrial development and 
commercial progress, they would ultimately yield to the usages 
of diplomacy ; but as they are organic and lie at the foundation 
of civilization and Christian society, they are not matters of trade 
and commerce, and cannot be adjusted through the skill of the 
diplomat nor the shrewdness of the trader. 

Germany has tried in numerous instances and divers ways to 
becloud the vital issue ; she has claimed that her enemies tried to 
check her legitimate and proper growth, and that this war was 
essential in self-defense as a matter of preservation in the rapid 
increase of her population, the development and expansion of 
her industries and commerce. There is as little truth in this as- 
sertion regarding the economic feature of the present situation, 
as there has been in many false moral teachings promulgated by 
German propagandists. 

While safeguarding her home markets with high tariff and 
other protective measures, giving industries and commerce gov- 
ernmental support with subsidized steamships and other foster- 
ing agencies, Germany has been privileged to reach the markets 
of the world. She has entered English markets and been given 
the opportunity of developing colonies that were presented to her. 
Her people have been privileged and encouraged to settle in every 
country of the Western Hemisphere and in Africa. 

The issues are not economic, but in truth, moral and funda- 
mental. Moreover, the people engaged in this mighty struggle 
of civilization are arrayed as they have been, with few exceptions, 
for two thousand years. The difference between the Central 
Powers and the Allies is innate. From a moral and social point 
of view it is fundamental. It is as irreconcilable as the difference 
was between the Phoenicians and the Greeks, so forcibly and 
clearly pointed out by Plato, more than four hundred years before 
the beginning of the Christian Era. And here it may be interest- 
ing to note that the Germans may be likened in their ideals, 
theories and practices to the Phoenicians of antiquity. In many 
respects a comparison is striking. We have been told that the 
"Art of the Phoenicians was both cosmopolitan and commercial. 
Their lack of originality and of artistic sense made it easy for 
them to turn their energies to copying the Arts of their powerful 
neighbors, especially Egypt and Assyria, and to cultivating those 
branches of Art that were merchantable and transportable." The 
Phoenicians can be traced back to the earliest times. They built 
the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Moloch was their chief deity and 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 125 

to him children and captives were sacrificed. He was the chief 
deity of Carthage, a great commercial city, that at one time had a 
population of 1,260,000. 

A large part of northwest Africa was colonized from 
Phoenicia. Carthage was a great commercial center. Her fleet 
traded with northern Europe and southern Africa. Herodotus 
said that the Phoenician cities distributed to the rest of the world 
the wares of Egypt and Babylonia. Ezekiel spoke of their won- 
derful prosperity and Jeremiah prophesied their downfall. We 
are told "in the Greek world the Phoenicians made themselves 
heartily detested. Their characteristic passion for gain was not 
likely to ingratiate them with those who were compelled to use 
their services while they suffered from their greed." Cato saw 
and appreciated these things and he wisely admonished the 
Romans that Carthage should be destroyed. Civilization feels the 
need of a Cato in the present crisis. 

The Germans are very much like the Phoenicians of antiquity 
and between them and the civilized and cultivated peoples of 
the present age there can be no compromise, no common ground 
on social and political questions. If one survive, the other must 
perish. The sooner we awake to this great truth, the sooner we 
shall feel more secure in our own existence and in preserving our 
government and conserving the institutions under which we live. 

We are at war with a race of barbarians who never have ob- 
served any rules of civilized warfare, who are without any sense 
of honor or chivalry, and who have no code of ethics. 

The social and political antithesis of English institutions is 
found in the self-abasement of that aggregation of vandals, rob- 
bers and murderers, known in international politics as the Im- 
perial German Government. The antipodes of civilization, as ex- 
pressed in the institutions, policies and practices of Great Britain, 
France, Belgium, Italy and the United States, is found in the 
theories and practices of the people who support the German 
Government. It is the eternal struggle between might and right. 
The fetish worship of the dangerous and superstitious doctrine 
of "divine right" against the will of the people which should 
be and is the supreme law of the land of all English speaking 
peoples. 

Fifty years after the Barons of England forced King John to 
grant the Great Charter, there assembled the first English Parlia- 
ment. A few years later the House of Hapsburg first appeared 
in history and one hundred and forty-two years later we find the 
earliest record of the House of Hohenzollern. During this period 
of nearly seven centuries, the history of Europe has been a strug- 
gle between the forces of absolutism and barbarism, as repre- 



126 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

sented by Germanic races of the Holy Roman Empire on one side, 
and the forces of humanity, civilization and democracy, as repre- 
sented by the English, and later the French, Belgian, Dutch, 
Scandinavian and Italian peoples, on the other side. During this 
long period the Germans have made no progress in democracy. 
They stand to-day, as they have stood for seven centuries, the 
savage enemies of human liberty and the stumbling blocks of 
civilization. Before all civilized peoples the Germans are to-day 
regarded as the outlaws of Christendom. When I speak of the 
Germans, I mean the German subjects of Austria as well as the 
German subjects of the House of Hohenzollern. There is no 
difference except that the Austrians have a veneering which, from 
a social point of view, is more agreeable than the bumptiousness, 
coarseness and vulgarity of the typical German. The Austrians 
were a part of the Holy Roman Empire, and Mr. Gladstone once 
said you could not put you finger on the map of Europe and say 
that "Here Austria has done well." 

It has been suggested by those high in authority that we are 
not interested in the dismemberment of the Austrian Empire. 
The Austrian Empire has been, and is, a menace to civilization. 
The territory and sovereignty of Poland cannot be restored, nor 
can the territory and sovereignty of Bohemia be restored, nor 
can justice be done to the Jugo-Slavs without the dismemberment 
of the Austrian Empire. A peace without justice to the Slavic 
races, especially the Poles and Bohemians who have made so 
many sacrifices for the cause of liberty and contributed so much 
to civilization, would be an inconclusive peace. The armies that 
are fighting the battles of Democracy will never consent to an 
inconclusive peace. Nor will the intelligent and liberty loving 
English speaking peoples, wherever found, accept an inconclusive 
peace. 

President Wilson has said that we are fighting to make the 
world safe for democracy. Later, he asserted that we are not 
making war on the German people. I hope I am well within 
the proprieties of the occasion, when, solely for the purpose of 
having a fair discussion of this vital question, I take the liberty 
of saying that I have been unable to comprehend how the world 
can be made safe for democracy until we make war on the Ger- 
man people and continue to make war on them; until they are 
punished for the great crimes of which they have been guilty and 
placed in a position where they never shall again have the power 
to threaten civilization. 

Of the many blunders — and I hope I am not using partisan 
language, because I do not so intend — of the many blunders we 
have made, none has been more unpardonable and certainly none 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 127 

more hazardous, than the declaration that we are not making war 
on the German people. So far as either may affect the progress 
of civilization, there is no difference between the German people 
and their rulers, and it is foolish, and in our case, suicidal, in the 
present crisis, to try to differentiate or treat separately the Ger- 
man people and their government. 

If we are not making war on the German people, we ought 
to make war on them, and we should have begun in August, 
1914, to prepare on a gigantic scale to make war on these ruthless 
enemies of civilization, and necessarily and consequently, enemies 
of America. For more than three years they have made war on 
us. They have fired on our flag ; they have sunk our ships ; they 
have robbed and murdered our citizens and abused our hospitality 
in forming conspiracies against the life of the nation. Too long 
have we indulged the narrow and selfish view that we were not 
concerned in the questions of this life and death struggle of 
Christendom. We have not yet paid the full penalty of our error. 
Let us not make another humiliating and dangerous mistake by 
trying to teach the people of this country that there is any differ- 
ence between the German people and their present rulers. The 
German rulers and the German Government have been what 
the German people desired, and what was and is best suited to 
their customs and such ideals as they have shown in history. 
Had not the German people been pleased with their rulers, had 
they desired a more humane, civilized and liberal government, 
they would have done what the English, the French, the Dutch, 
the Italians, the Belgians and other civilized and liberty-loving 
people have done. They would have destroyed the absolute gov- 
ernments and set up in their place more liberal governments. 

Judged by their support of the brutal and despotic govern- 
ments which they have always had ; judged by their declarations, 
their avowed purpose and their deeds, the German people are the 
most savage, inhuman, treacherous and dishonorable that have 
existed on this earth, not excepting their prototypes, the Huns 
of the fourth and fifth centuries. The policy of Prussia, from 
its earliest history, has been to rob and take territory from its 
neighboring states. From the time of the great Elector of Brand- 
enburg, who was a coarse, savage brute, every German ruler has 
stood for absolutism and "divine right." 

I have said that differences between the German people and 
the people of democratic governments, represented by the Allied 
Powers against Germany, are innate and fundamental. For seven 
centuries the English speaking peoples have been, slowly and with 
great sacrifices, evolving the social and political institutions which 
we call democracy and which the Germans are now trying to 



128 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

destroy. From the Great Charter of English liberties, which 
marks the beginning of the evolution of democracy among the 
English speaking peoples, the Germanic races, whether under 
the House of Hapsburg or Hohenzollern, have been open enemies 
of English institutions. Enemies of every form of democracy, 
they have brutally fought every struggle for the advancement of 
human liberty. 

As a result of the War of the Austrian Succession, Frederick 
the Great grabbed Silesia in 1742. Next to the dismemberment of 
Poland, which was also planned by Frederick the Great, a few 
years later, the taking of Silesia was one of the most diabolical 
deeds in the history of Europe. Macaulay said of Frederick the 
Great, that in order that he might rob a neighbor whom he had 
promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coro- 
mandel and red men scalped each other on the Great Lakes of 
North America. The Germans, whether under the Hohenzollerns 
of Germany or the Hapsburgs of Austria, have made no progress 
in democracy or the high ideals of civilization. 

From the time of Julius Caesar to the present day, the Ger- 
mans have been engaged in the savage practices that they have 
shown during the present war. You could not find a more damn- 
ing, a more condemnatory indictment of the German people than 
is found in Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War. He had 
utter loathing for them, and on the other hand, he had great con- 
fidence in and great respect for the Gauls whom he made allies 
of Rome, and called them brethren. 

In the days of Caesar the Germans crossed the Rhine, drove 
the Helvetians into Gaul and occupied the territory now known 
as Alsace-Lorraine. Caesar went into that country to drive them 
back. He knew the Germans. He had some experience with their 
treachery and f rightfulness, and his writings are as condemnatory 
as anything you could possibly read against the Germans. I re- 
peat, that the issues between the Allies and the Central Powers 
are the same to-day as they were in the days of Caesar, and we 
find the same races arrayed against one another. 

If you study the history of the great decisive battles of Europe 
that have saved civilization, you will find three that are worthy of 
particular note. The Battle of the Marne in the early days of 
September, 1914, was not the first Battle of the Marne that saved 
Europe from the domination of the vandals. The first Battle of 
the Marne was fought nearly fifteen hundred years ago on the 
same territory, substantially by the same races and the result of 
each battle was the deliverance of civilization. It was about the 
middle of the fifth century that the Gallic tribes, the ancestors 
of the French, met the "Scourge of God," Attila, the leader of the 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 129 

Huns, and drove him back and saved Europe. We know in the 
light of history what would have been the future of Europe if 
the Huns had not been defeated at the Battle of the Marne in 
451 ; and we can easily imagine what the situation would be in 
the Christian world to-day if the Huns had not been defeated at 
the Battle of the Marne in 1914. We know what would have 
happened had the vandals reached the channel coast when 
America was unprepared and "too proud to fight." It is of little 
consequence, so far as we are concerned, because they are ques- 
tions for the ethnologist and the historian to determine, whether 
the Germans are in fact descendents of the Huns ; we know that 
their practices and their methods are the same. 

The next great battle that saved Europe from the barbarians, 
was about the middle of the eighth century, when the French 
again on French soil, under the leadership of Charles Martel, 
drove back the Saracens. 

Again, it was in 1683 that the Poles, under John Sobieski, 
saved Europe from the barbarians. The Turks with an army of 
300,000 invested Vienna, the metropolis of Christendom at that 
time. Leopold, the Emperor of Austria, true to his Hapsburg 
inheritance and bringing-up, had run away when John Sobieski 
with his brave Poles went to the relief of Vienna and saved 
civilization. So that we find on down through the centuries of 
history, from the time of Julius Caesar to the present hour, the 
Slavic races of Poland and Bohemia, the Gallic and Celtic races, 
have on more than one occasion saved civilization from the Huns 
and preserved the institutions of liberty. 

I challenge any defender of German policies and practices to 
show one spot on the map of Europe where Germany has ever 
made any sacrifice for the cause of civilization. I have made 
that statement before, and on one occasion a man rose with some 
indignation and said, "How dare you make that statement if 
you know anything of the life of the German martyr, Martin 
Luther ?" I said, I did not intend to mention Martin Luther, but 
I thank you for affording me an excuse for referring to him. 
When you tell me that Martin Luther died a martyr, I can tell you 
that history denies it, because no German of whom I ever read 
died a martyr. As a scholar and as a leader, in attacks on the sale 
of licenses and privileges, what we here in America would call 
corrupt practices in the church, Martin Luther cannot be too 
highly praised. 

But a little more than one hundred years, or hardly a hun- 
dred years, before Luther, there was, across in the adjacent coun- 
try of Bohemia, John Huss. Huss not only attacked corrupt 
practices in the church, but he stood for civil liberty and uplift 



130 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

of the poor serfs of that country, and, Bohemian-like, he died a 
martyr to his faith. German-like, when the poor serfs, thinking 
that God had sent them a leader, to lift some of the burdens of 
German oppression, rose in rebellion, Martin Luther turned to 
the princes and advised them to shoot down the people for whom 
John Huss had died. Luther was a Saxon, the best of the Ger- 
mans, but withal he was a German and his life gave striking 
evidence of Germany perfidy and cowardice. In comparing the 
life of Luther with John Huss, we find the innate racial differ- 
ence between the Bohemian and the German, and it is just as 
marked in America to-day as it was in the middle of the sixteenth 
century in Europe. I have attended meetings of Bohemians and 
Poles in this country, when they expressed in words and showed 
by deeds their loyalty to America, but I have not had the privilege 
of attending any German meetings of that character. 

A little while ago in a great Coliseum in the city of Chicago, 
there assembled some fifteen thousand Poles, under the leader- 
ship of that great artist and still greater patriot, Paderewski, who 
spoke with the fervor and patriotic eloquence of the illustrious 
Kosciuszko, and at that meeting thousands were mustered in to 
fight for the country of their adoption. No such meetings of the 
Germans have been held in our city. I don't know how many 
you had in New York, but I have not read of any in this city. 

The Germans were brought up, from the cradle, to war and 
rapine, so Caesar said. And here, it may be interesting for us 
to recall one point in the early history of the Germanic tribes. 
Rome always succeeded in defeating the barbarians. She de- 
feated them under Alaric and Attila ; but she never took the pre- 
caution to destroy their power so that they would not be able to 
attack again. The Allies should take warning. 

I come now, — if I haven't over-reached my time — I come now 
to discuss briefly Germanism in America. At the outbreak 
of this war I read numerous articles in the papers, not only of 
my own city, where Germanism is strong, but also the New York 
papers (some of them) — statements made by irresponsible and 
fulsome writers, testifying to Germany's alleged friendship for 
America. 

There has not been a day in the history of America, from the 
time that she sent her first commissioners to Europe, that Ger- 
many has not been the enemy of America, and there has never 
been one occasion that she showed her friendly spirit. Frederick 
the Great refused to receive our commissioners, and Joseph II 
of Austria also refused to receive them. 

Arthur Lee was sent to Berlin as the envoy or commissioner 
from the American colonies, but Frederick the Great refused to 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 131 

receive him. Frederick declared he would first try to find out 
which side would win and then go with that side. This decision 
of Frederick the Great, respecting the representative of our 
colonial fathers, who were fighting against the oppression of a 
German King of England, was in full accord with the code estab- 
lished by Frederick the Great, expressed by him in these words : 
"No ministers at home, but clerks ; no ministers abroad, but spies ; 
form alliances only to sow animosities ; kindle and prolong wars 
between my neighbors; always promise help and never send it; 
there is only one person in the Kingdom, and that is myself." 

Benjamin Franklin warned America against the Germans. 
He was in Europe in the interest of the American colonies ; first 
in England, before the Declaration of Independence, then in 
France and other countries of the continent after our declaration 
of war with England. In his prophetic warnings against the Ger- 
mans he said ; "Measures of great temper are necessary with the 
Germans. . . . Not being used to liberty they know not how to 
make a modest use of it. In short, unless the stream of their 
importation can be turned from this to other colonies . . . they 
will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages which we have 
will not, in my opinion, be able to preserve our language and even 
our Government will become precarious." Franklin saw far into 
the future and the situation that he anticipated confronts us to- 
day. It is a pity his admonitions were not heeded. 

Before going further into the history of Germanism in Ameri- 
ca, I desire to call your attention to one important event in his- 
tory, which sustains my grave but just charge that the Germans as 
a race have no sense of honor. We know that there are notable 
exceptions. We have distinguished exceptions here in this coun- 
try of loyal Germans, but I am speaking of them as a race and 
nation. 

When Napoleon started to Egypt, without firing a gun, he 
took the Island of Malta, supposed to be impregnable if there was 
one impregnable spot on the Mediterranean Sea. One of his staff 
remarked to him when they entered that it was well they had 
somebody on the inside to let them in. They did have somebody 
to let them in. The Knights of St. John, for nearly three hun- 
dred years on the Island of Malta, had defended Europe against 
the attacks of the Turks. It stood as the great outpost in defense 
of Christian Europe against the attacks by sea, but in an un- 
guarded moment, in the period of decline, the Knights of St. 
John, later known as the Knights of Malta, elected for the first 
time and for the last time a German as Grand Master. He was 
the last Grand Master of the Knights of St. John ; because, Ger- 
man-like, he destroyed them. Immediately after his election as 



132 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Grand Master, he entered into negotiations with representatives 
of Napoleon, and he engaged, for a consideration of 600,000 
francs and an estate in Germany, to surrender the fortress, and he 
delivered the Island of Malta to Napoleon without firing a gun. 
Baron Hompesch, the German Grand Master, who betrayed the 
Knights of St. John, was seized by the Knights and later the island 
was turned over to Great Britain and the English have held it 
to this day. 

There is not a spot on the Western Hemisphere where the 
Germans have built for civilization. In the early history of this 
country, following the discovery by Columbus, the Spaniards, 
English, Dutch, French, and in a limited way, the Danes and 
Swedes, settled and built well, and farther South the Portuguese 
came. Each of these races and nations, in its own way, came as 
pioneers and built for civilization and has left its lasting imprint 
upon America, but the Germans came only as camp followers 
and sutlers. The German has never built in America as a pio- 
neer, nor has he ever gone into any other country as a pioneer. 

But there is one notable exception to this general charge which 
should be noted because it is interesting and well illustrates Ger- 
man practices and methods. Charles the Fifth, of the Holy Ro- 
man Empire, also known as Charles the First in Spanish history, 
was a great borrower of money. He borrowed large sums of 
money from a German banking house, the name of which I do 
not recall at the moment, and I will not tire you to look it up, but 
one of the noted German banking houses of the sixteenth century, 
and he gave them as security Little Venice, — Venezuela ; and that 
country has been a sore spot on the Western Hemisphere from 
that day to this blessed moment. Their enslavement and mur- 
der of the natives and their unspeakable crimes actually shocked 
Charles the Fifth, and you may know how bad they were when 
they shocked him, and he revoked their charter. That was their 
only attempt as pioneers on the Western Hemisphere in America 
and that was a monumental failure. 

The war of the American colonists against the oppressive 
measures of a German king of England involved substantially 
the same issues, and the same people were engaged in it on the 
same sides that are engaged in the conflict to-day. It was in 
truth a war between the French and English on one side and the 
Germans on the other side. The House of Hanover came to the 
throne of England as the result of one of those unfortunate dy- 
nastic marriages. George, Elector of Hanover, known in Eng- 
lish history as George I, was the son of Sophia, granddaughter 
of James the First of England. He succeeded to the English 
throne by virtue of an act of Parliament, known as the Act of 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 133 

Settlement, passed in 1701, which, in default of an issue from 
Anne and William, entailed the crown on the Electress Sophia 
and her heirs, being Protestant. George went over to England, 
unable to speak a word of the English language, ignorant of 
English character and with no proper conception of English in- 
stitutions. He took with him a train of mistresses and ascended 
the English throne as George I, first of the House of Hanover. 

Trouble with the American colonies followed the coming of 
the House of Hanover to the English throne, and it continued 
down to the reign of George III, whose arbitrary measures 
brought on the Declaration of Independence and the War of 
the American Revolution. We should not forget to-day, in the 
present world crisis, that practically every great statesman in 
England at that time was openly and earnestly with the Ameri- 
can colonies and against the policies of the throne. George III 
could not, and he did not, get English troops to fight the war, 
but he went where the crowned heads of Europe had been going 
for centuries to buy soldiers. He went to the little principalities 
and dukedoms of Germany, and there he hired from his kins- 
man, the Duke of Brunswick, six thousand mercenary troops 
that landed at Quebec, and later were captured at Saratoga. The 
landgrave of Hess and the Duke of Brunswick were the first 
to sell soldiers to George III, but later other German Princes got 
in the market. There were at that time over 300 principalities, 
dukedoms and whatnot, claiming sovereignty in Germany. Princes 
were plentiful and all were in the market for money any way 
they could get it, just as they were in the time of Csesar and as 
they are to-day. 

And further to illustrate the innate racial differences to which 
I have referred, and to show how frequently in history we find 
the same people arrayed against one another, the Germans, with- 
out exception, always on the side of oppression and absolutism, 
it is interesting to recall one of the most important events in 
the American Revolution. The battle of Saratoga was the first 
great victory for the American patriots and the immediate whole- 
some result of that victory was to cement not only the friend- 
ship of the French people, but also the active material support 
of the French Government. And for that victory the American 
patriots were largely indebted to the Polish patriot, Kosciuszko, 
who planned the battle of Bemis Heights and Saratoga, and who 
later built the defenses at West Point. This splendid Pole, il- 
lustrious patriot and statesman, after fighting for the American 
patriots and rendering most valuable service in this country, re- 
turned to fight again for his native land, and well has the Eng- 
lish poet said 



134 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

"Hope for a season bade the world farewell, 
And Freedom shrieked when Kosciuszko fell." 

There were engaged in the war of the American Revolution 
some thirty thousand Hessians, German mercenaries. They rep- 
resented nearly about ninety per cent of the English Army. The 
atrocities and outrages of the Hessians in that war invited the 
protest of General Washington. In answer to his protest, it was 
said that they had been offered that inducement to come to Amer- 
ica, and that they were accustomed to frightful practices and 
that without it they would not have come. If you read Ban- 
croft's story of the atrocities in the American Revolution, par- 
ticularly in the Carolinas, you will think that you are reading 
the story of the German atrocities in Belgium and France in 
1914 and 1915. 

Germans began coming to this country in great numbers 
about 1840. I have frequently heard it said that they ran away 
from the so-called revolution of 1848. Practically all of Europe 
was involved at that time but it was a small affair in Germany. 
The Germans have never been very strong on revolutions in their 
own country. There were social and political disturbances in 
Europe in '48. One of those outbreaks evidencing the growth 
of democracy, but the democratic feeling did not show great 
virility or aggressive force in Germany. The Germans ran away. 
This has always been their policy. Some of the leading German- 
Americans are very boastful about the fact that their grand- 
fathers ran away from Germany in 1848. The Germans are the 
only people who come to this country and boast about having run 
away from their own country. The English, the French, the 
Belgians, the Italians, the Serbians and others who are en- 
gaged in this war against Germany have never boasted about 
their fathers running away from their native country. The 
truth is they did not run away. They stayed at home and fought 
the battles of democracy and many of them gave their lives for 
the cause of human liberty. Cavour and Garibaldi did not run 
away from Italy and that is the reason Italy is a democracy to- 
day. Only the Germans are proud of the fact that their ancestors 
ran away from their native country. Germans were considered un- 
desirable citizens of this country when in 1838-1848 German im- 
migration was investigated by the United States Senate at request 
of a resolution passed by the General Court of Massachusetts. 

And what is the record of Germans here in America ? There 
have been some Germans who have made good citizens of the 
United States, who have come to claim the protection of our flag 
and to enjoy the greater opportunities for making a living and for 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 135 

the pursuit of happiness, and some who were brave soldiers in the 
Union Army: but it is also a fact, so far as I have been able to 
gather information from the records, and it has been published in 
your papers here in New York, that the highest percentage of de- 
sertions was among the Germans. Sixteen per cent, of the Ger- 
mans deserted in that war and seven per cent, of the British. 
That is the comparative record of the Germans in the Civil 
War. 

There is the record of Franz Sigel, who was a German- 
American soldier. Born in Baden. He rose to the rank of 
Major General of Volunteers in the Civil War, but the Admin- 
istration lost confidence in him and he was relieved of his com- 
mand. I believe you have a monument to Sigel here on the River- 
side Drive, not very far from the Grant mausoleum, but there 
is also a monument to Frederick the Great at the National Capi- 
tol, not very far from the Washington monument. 

The German educational work has been very efficient and 
effective in this country and we have been too indifferent about 
the influence of German propaganda. There are monuments to 
Franz Sigel in other parts of the country where German influ- 
ence is strong and German bumptiousness is unchecked ; but there 
is another monument to Sigel, not built in marble or bronze, 
nor placed conspicuously before the public. It is enduring evi- 
dence of German faithlessness, if that may be called a monument, 
and can be found in the second volume of the Memoirs of General 
Grant and expressed in these words "Sigel's record is almost 
equally brief. He moved out, it is true, according to program, 
but just when I was hoping to hear of good work being done by 
him in the Valley, I received instead the following announcement 
from Halleck: 'Sigel is in full retreat on Strasburg. He will 
do nothing but run. Never did anything else/ The enemy had 
intercepted him about New Market and handled him roughly, 
leaving him short six guns and some 900 men out of 6,000." 

The German-Americans point to Carl Schurz as the most dis- 
tinguished of their sect, and what is his record? When Carl 
Schurz left Germany he lived for three years in other countries 
of Europe, — first in Switzerland, then in France, then in Eng- 
land. In 1852 he came to America, and resided first in Penn- 
sylvania, then in Wisconsin, then in Michigan, then in Missouri, 
and then in New York. Mr. Blaine said of Schurz that "he has 
not become rooted and grounded anywhere, has never established 
a home, is not identified with any community, is not interwoven 
with the interests of any locality or of any class, has no fixed 
relations to Church or State, to professional, political, or social 
life, has acquired none of that companionship and confidence 



136 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

which unite old neighbors in the closest ties, and give to friend- 
ship its fullest development, its most gracious attributes." 

I don't suppose there ever lived a German in America who 
brought more trouble on this country than Carl Schurz. In 1865 
he was appointed by President Johnson, with General Grant, to 
visit the Southern States that had been in rebellion. Grant was 
a gentleman as well as a broad, patriotic American. He had 
received the surrender of General Lee, but he was too brave and 
chivalric to use his possession for prosecuting a defeated foe. 
He made a report substantially in line with the views expressed 
by the Duke of Wellington when he protested against the con- 
duct of Blucher following Waterloo, and declared that the pres- 
ence of a victorious army in the conquered country of a highly 
civilized, liberty-loving people prevented the establishment of per- 
manent peace and stable government. The report of Mr. Schurz 
was the opposite. German-like, he had no faith in the people, 
and no plan of dealing with a defeated foe except the brutal 
German plan of physical force and oppression. His report was 
made the basis of the reconstruction measures of Thaddeus Ste- 
vens, and we know how those measures prolonged sectional prej- 
udice in this country, accentuated racial prejudice and brought 
needless suffering on the poor negroes. 

In writing an epilogue to a very interesting volume under 
the title of "Why Europe is at War," my distinguished friend, 
General Greene, who is here to-day, refers to the action of Carl 
Schurz during the Franco-Prussian War, in these words : 

"It is a well-settled principle of international law that any 
change by a neutral nation, after the outbreak of hostilities, in 
its neutrality laws is in itself a breach of neutrality. It is an 
interesting fact that in the war of 1870, Carl Schurz, then United 
States Senator from Missouri, protested in the Senate against 
the sales of arms to France ; and his action had important politi- 
cal consequences in this country. It was one of the factors which 
led to the formation of the Liberal party in 1872, the nomina- 
tion by that party of Horace Greeley for President, the endorse- 
ment of the nomination by the Democratic party, the overwhelm- 
ing defeat of Greeley in the election of 1872, and the death of 
Greeley soon after the election. I had the story at considerable 
length from his standpoint, and a very interesting story it was, 
from General Grant at St. Petersburg in August, 1878, at the 
time that he was making his tour around the world. I remember 
his saying that while he had great respect for Carl Schurz he 
could not but think that his conduct in this matter showed him 
to be more of a German than an American. . . . The enmity 
of Carl Schurz toward President Grant and his Administration 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 137 

dated from this controversy, and because the Administration did 
not accede to Schurz's view, Schurz set out to split the Repub- 
lican party and to defeat General Grant for the nomination; or 
if he received the nomination, then to organize from a minority 
of the Republicans and from the Democrats a party which should 
defeat him at the election. The plans of Schurz and Sumner 
and Greeley, as is well known, came to an ignominious failure." 

I have already referred to the Duke of Wellington's protest- 
ing against the policies of Blucher following Waterloo. Bliicher 
with the German Army was the first of the allied armies against 
Napoleon to arrive in Paris after Waterloo, and he at once 
began the German practice of murder and looting. Alexander 
of Russia was the next to arrive, and he protested. The next 
propostion of Blucher was to assassinate Napoleon. He sent 
one of his staff officers to the Duke of Wellington, stating he 
had the matter in shape and could do the job. Needless to say, 
the Duke of Wellington dismissed the German officer with in- 
dignation, stating that it would be a stain on the English from 
which they would never recover and would destroy all the glory 
of Waterloo. Blucher's next proposition was to dismember 
France as Frederick the Great had dismembered Poland. 

If any people had just cause to feel a resentment against the 
French, it was Russia ; but Alexander of Russia joined with the 
Duke of Wellington to prevent the dismemberment of France. 
The last proposition made by Blucher was to maintain indefinitely 
forces of the allied army in France. The Duke of Wellington 
replied that the presence of the army would prevent permanent 
peace and the establishmnt of a stable government. General 
Grant used almost the same language in his report about condi- 
tions in the South, in the latter part of 1865, that the Duke of 
Wellington had used in speaking about conditions in France 
nearly fifty years before. 

In the history of the Franco-Prussian War, we find the same 
story of German frightfulness, vandalism and perfidy. Every 
village that the Germans passed through was made the victim of 
organized pillage. The German troops murdered civil populations 
and indiscriminately massacred, solely to spread terror. Large 
and populous cities were bombarded and burned and the women 
and children in them slaughtered with the sole object of inflict- 
ing suffering. The horrors that France has passed through dur- 
ing the present war are but repetitions of her experiences during 
the Franco-Prussian War. 

A word more about German-Americans. I fear I have al- 
ready gone beyond the time allowed for this topic but with your 
indulgence I desire to draw attention to one more incident in 



138 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

American history which so forcibly illustrates the disloyalty of 
German- Americans. It was an event of such gravity that it could 
almost be called an epoch in American history. I refer to Ger- 
many's action at the time of the trouble respecting the Samoan 
Islands. 

In 1873, one Col. A. B. Steinberger, a native of Germany, 
migrated to this country and in due time he took the oath of al- 
legiance to the United States, renouncing his allegiance to Ger- 
many, and became a citizen of this country. Through German 
political influence he was appointed United States Commissioner 
to the Samoan Islands in 1873. He reported on conditions and 
was sent back in 1874, but instead of going to Samoa he went 
to Berlin and placed himself in connection with GodefTroy & 
Co. "Thence, indeed, he proceeded to Samoa as United States 
Commissioner in name, but in fact as agent of the German firm." 
Trouble began as soon as he returned to Samoa. "He played 
American against German interests." Had himself made prime 
minister of Samoa. The British government deposed him and 
the United States repudiated him. Later in the Samoan affair, 
it was just after the German flag had been fired upon in con- 
nection with that affair in Samoa that feeling was running dan- 
gerously high, when nearly 200 German organizations met in 
Chicago and with cheers for the Kaiser passed resolutions de- 
claring that it was to their interest to foster German language 
and traits of German character. Similar meetings were held in 
St. Louis and Kansas City. 

We have heard a great deal about German efficiency. We 
frequently hear it said that the Germans are wide awake, pro- 
gressive and successful business men. That they have built up 
a great commercial nation and are successful in business in other 
countries to which they migrate. It is true that Germany has 
made wonderful strides in commercial development and the Ger- 
mans are successful in business and prove themselves excellent 
tradesmen and merchants, where cunning and shrewdness are 
necessary or can be utilized in business practices, but so far as 
commercial integrity and business honor are concerned, the Ger- 
mans do not possess it, as a nation or as a people. One striking 
event of late American history will illustrate the point. 

In the great conflagration at San Francisco, following the 
earthquake of April, 1906, the total loss to insurance companies 
of the world was approximately 225 million dollars and the esti- 
mated actual value of the property represented by these losses 
was nearly or quite 100 million dollars more. The record of the 
settlement of these losses furnishes interesting figures for com- 
parative purposes. The record of these settlements furnishes 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 139 

further evidence of innate racial differences to which I have so 
frequently referred. These differences crop out in business affairs 
quite as frequently as in social and political affairs wherever 
the German is concerned. I have not the time and I fear you 
would not have the patience to listen to the figures in detail, but a 
summary of those settlements for comparative purposes illus- 
trating my point and showing that the Germans are lacking in 
business integrity, may be briefly stated in a few words : 

There were twenty-seven English companies interested in the 
San Francisco losses. Sixteen of these British companies paid 
losses immediately without any discount ; three paid on an average 
°f 95 P er cen t- to 98 per cent; two paid 85 per cent, to 90 per 
cent ; one paid 75 per cent, to 80 per cent. ; four paid 50 per cent. 
t0 75 P er cent - an d one denied all liability on account of earth- 
quake clause. 

Of the forty United States companies interested, seventeen 
paid the full amount of adjusted losses without discounts; six 
paid from 90 per cent, to 97 per cent, of the adjusted losses, the 2 
per cent, to 5 per cent, discount usually being for cash payment. 
Two paid from 85 per cent, to 90 per cent. ; five paid 75 per cent, 
to 80 per cent. ; three paid 40 per cent, to 50 per cent. ; two de- 
clined to pay anything, and no definite figures exist regarding 
two companies. 

Of the eight French companies sustaining losses, seven paid 
promptly and without any discount for cash settlement ; one paid 
75 per cent, to 80 per cent. ; none denied liability. 

One Belgian company was represented and paid the full 
amount of its losses without discount. 

Of the thirteen German companies represented, one paid the 
full amount of its losses on a basis of 92 per cent., but the total 
losses of this company amounted in the aggregate to only $2,751. 
One German company paid 85 per cent, to 90 per cent. ; four paid 
75 per cent, to 80 per cent. ; one paid 50 per cent, and six compa- 
nies denied all liability. At least eight of the German companies 
were known to be able to pay the full amount of their losses with- 
out discount. 

From Julius Caesar to the present hour it is one continuous 
story of German treachery, German vandalism, German barbari- 
ties and German dishonor, national and private. 

Within the limits of this hour's discussion I have been able to 
refer only briefly to some of the most striking incidents of Ger- 
man perfidy. A great deal more could be said touching the facts 
that I have gathered from the history of this people, but it would 
be only cumulative evidence in support of the general indictment 
against these outlaws of Christendom. 



140 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 



TWO: BY CAPTAIN A. P. SIMONDS, U. S. A. 

After the splendid historical address of my good friend, Mr. 
Skaggs, perhaps it might be ill-timed for me to bring to you my 
message from the Government. Unfortunately, it is not a simple 
story, but a gruesome tale. There isn't anything simple to-day 
about this great tragedy and struggle in which the nations of 
the world are arrayed against one another. The facts are horri- 
ble, and when I was selected to bring before the American people, 
to bring the war home to them, it was with a great deal of hesi- 
tancy that I finally yielded to the entreaties of the Secretary of 
War, to awake the people to conditions as they are. However, 
I was American enough to know that just as soon as the Ameri- 
can people realized the facts as they were and as they are, that 
nothing on top of God's earth could stop the result, the inevitable 
result, the ending of this war as we knew it would be. 

In the first place, it was my fortune, or misfortune, as you 
wish to call it, to be in the fortress on the German frontier with 
Colonel von Biedelmann of the Tenth Hussars, when the word 
came to mobilize the German Army. Perhaps it might not be 
amiss for me to tell you civilians that at no time, does any one, 
outside the German staff, know when the order to mobilize is 
given. It comes utterly unknown, which will, in a measure, 
further illustrate to you the marvelous efficiency of this great 
fighting machine which to-day is our foe. At a quarter to eleven 
at night the order came, and in a little less than twenty-four hours, 
to be precise, twenty-three and a half hours, I saw one million, 
seven hundred thousand men mobilize on the German frontier. 
I mean, of course, the start of the mobilization, as no one man 
could see that all at one time. 

There isn't one of you gentlemen, within the range of my 
voice, who has ever seen a million of anything, outside of figures. 
Think, for one moment, of one million, seven hundred thousand 
perfectly equipped, trained and well-armed men. When we speak 
of mobilization in the Army, we speak of it in a strictly military 
sense — armed, equipped, provisioned, clothed and ready for in- 
stant and active orders. It would have taken any Colonel, — and 
I think I say this safely within the hearing of my friend, General 
Greene, — it would have taken any Colonel in our regular service 
thirty days to mobilize his regiment. I mean nothing disparaging 
against our Army, because, understand that our slogan had al- 
ways been taught, "A land of peace, plenty and liberty." I shall 
illustrate as I go along that ever dominant phrase throughout the 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 141 

German Empire: "In the event of war." It dominated every 
German mind from Potsdam down. 

To-day Germany has five million men on the fighting line. 
She has two million men in reserve, and she has three million 
boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen who, in three years 
— which is the very shortest possible time that the most opti- 
mistic men in our War Department look and hope that this ter- 
rible struggle will end — who, in three years, will have reached 
the very height of German military efficiency. Ambassador 
Gerard the other day went a little better by saying eleven mil- 
lion. I am perfectly willing to yield to Mr. Gerard's judgment, 
as he should know. Ten million men on the line. Remember 
the finest trained and most efficient fighting machine that the 
world has ever seen, and I go on record here as saying that the 
world will ever see again. 

Secondly, let me tell you just a few things from a military 
standpoint which I observed, which illustrate the marvelous effi- 
ciency of that army. I was struck one day in a German city by 
the coincidence that all the trades wagons throughout the various 
German cities that I had just visited, while the tops were painted 
in gaudy colors, advertising the various businesses and wares of 
the merchants, the gearings were all painted in what we call 
in the army, "The Army B. & G." — black and gray. When I 
asked my friend why this was, he laughed with that German sneer 
which perhaps some of you know so well, and said, "In the event 
of war." 

As I called your attention to it a moment ago, I want you 
carefully to pay attention to that ever dominant phrase in the 
Prussian mind : "In the event of war." Off come the tops in 
the twinkling of an eye. The gearings are all standard gauge, 
and are used and were used in that very way, in conveying muni- 
tions, supplies, etc., to the various German frontiers — a fine piece 
of military efficiency. 

Again, imagine my surprise, when I was conducted in a cer- 
tain German city through what, some years previously, was, or 
seemed to be a warehouse. I was shown the most complete hos- 
pital that I ever saw in my life ; the ground floor containing forty 
rooms with portable baths, a like number of the second, third 
and fourth floors, tiled, sanitary, throughout. When I asked my 
friend how this was, and recalled the fact that I had visited this 
warehouse, again he replied, "You Americans never look toward 
the future. In the event of war." And you have this hospital 
— that very hospital to-day is the second largest, best hospital on 
the German frontier. 

Then, every single telegraph and telephone line is govern- 



142 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

ment-owned in Germany, there being no corporate-owned lines. 
There are always two wires which are controlled and used ex- 
clusively by the army and navy, for no other purpose whatever. 

At the declaration of war by Germany on France, in exactly 
thirteen minutes and a half, instruments were attached to the 
various termini of these two lines, connecting the entire German 
frontier with Wilhelmstrasse in that space of time — a marvel- 
ous piece of German efficiency. 

Let me tell you that to-day the system, the military Prussian 
system, is so inculcated into the German, as my friend has said, 
from the cradle up, that as I sat one night after the opera in a 
restaurant in Berlin, I was struck by the fact that all the guests 
there were in evening dress except one man. You, as Americans, 
and some of us as Army men, know that it has ever been the 
custom of American Army officers to be inconspicuous. Imagine 
my surprise when I saw this Prussian officer of very high rank 
walk into the dining-room, seat himself at a table and order lav- 
ishly. In a moment a waiter sidled up to him — fortunately he 
was sitting only a few feet from me — I saw a piece of paper laid, 
in front of him. I saw him leave his meal half eaten. 

Determined to see or follow the thing as far as I was able, I 
followed him outside into the courtyard, heard him speak a very 
few hurried words to the concierge and depart. I went outside, 
and there stood his orderly with his horse all ready for instant 
active service. He clicked his heels and saluted in the German 
fashion, mounted his own horse and drove away. What I finally 
found out was that that officer had received his orders at that 
moment, totally unexpected. I asked the question which would 
naturally arise in your mind — how that man was to be found at 
that hour of the day or night, and this time I learned that there 
is not an officer, from the General Staff down, in Germany, who 
is not within two hours' orders from the General Staff. Think 
of that for German efficiency! 

To give you just an idea (I was asked to bring this to your 
attention) of the arrogance of the military men, I was standing in 
a hotel one evening with my wife and family, when a German 
Sub-Lieutenant sidled up to the table, tapped me on the arm, 
saluted and said, "I am Lieutenant So-and-so. Present me to the 
ladies." I had no idea as to whether it was a joke or otherwise, 
at first. It suddenly occurred to me that I thought I had seen 
him at a function of our Ambassador's, and then, after deciding 
it was not so, I said, "I will ask the ladies whether they would 

like to meet you." He said, "I am Lieutenant . Present 

me to the ladies." I said, "In my country, it is customary to con- 
sult the ladies as to whom they will meet." He said, "Do you 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 143 

know who I am? I am Lieutenant . Present me to the 

ladies." My good American blood asserted itself, and I said, 
"I don't give a damn who you are. In our country our wives 
and ladies decide whom they will meet." And I didn't say it, I 
thought it, I didn't give a damn whether he was the Kaiser or 
not. He walked away and said I should hear from that. I never 
did! As Mr. Gerard says, it was one time when I could say 
"Damn" with an American punch. 

To get back to the subject in hand. I want to tell you an 
alarming piece of news. In the first place, in my travels through- 
out this country, I find that not five per cent of the American 
people to-day realize what this war is. I don't mean to cast one 
aspersion against the loyalty and Americanism of our citizens 
throughout this land, but I tell you, that to-day America is lit- 
erally asleep and you don't know, but I shall tell you, that the 
very dragon of the Rhine is literally at your front door. 

I go into these towns and outside of these service flags or 
some war charities, there isn't a single, solitary evidence in that 
city that this country is at war. Men are spending money lavishly 
and burning up thousands of gallons of gasoline by the hour in 
useless joy-riding, and with no thought that right at your very 
doors are things which will literally turn your blood cold. You 
don't know it ; you don't know it. 

When you take the peaceful cities of the world where nothing 
but peace reigns and turn them into a veritable battlefield of Hell 
as it is "over there," when that grim destroyer has struggled 
against you and taken its toll, when on every third door hangs 
its crape, where every single woman is some widow or mother 
or sister in mourning, where on the streets you can't find an able- 
bodied man between the ages of thirteen and seventy unless he 
has an arm or leg gone or face smashed or gashed, then will 
America realize it; but realize on top of that that there has 
never been any doubt in the minds of Americans as to how this 
war will end. We know how it is going to end, but it is the price, 
it is the price, that we have got to pay. And you don't know and 
you don't realize now, scarcely any of you, what it means. Why, 
it means the very sanctity of your homes, and we know it, and we 
are trying to tell you so as to awaken you and make this price less. 

Oh, there has been too much talking of preparing to fight. 
We have got to prepare to win and win quickly. The last words 
that General Joffre said when he left this country were not alone 
to express his praise and gratitude to this great Republic for its 
entrance into this fray, but, with his hands outstretched on that 
vessel, and the tears streaming down his face, the very last words 
he said were : "For God's sake, hurry up." And I tell you now 



144 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

that you don't realize how much you have to hurry. This is a 
war of preservation, which means just exactly one of two things. 
It means either freedom or slavery for America. 

We don't care to-day what a man's religion or his creed or his 
color is, so long as he is American through and through. No 
German-Americans ; no English-Americans ; no French- Ameri- 
cans; a man is to-day either one of two things in this country; 
he is either against America, or for her. If he is against her, then 
I say to him "Get thee hence from out our midst." 

We have a national job to attend to now, in which all petty 
jealousies must be dispensed with, and we must devote our re- 
sources and energies to the business in hand, which is the business 
of winning this war. 

You have no idea of the foe against you, until you know and 
see what is going on somewhere "over there." Ask yourselves 
the question, if you will, What right have you, what have you 
done, any of you throughout this great country, what have you 
ever done, that you can ask my boy to die for you, or your neigh- 
bor's boy to die for you? And yet, "somewhere over there," 
quietly, we have got thousands of our boys, boys who are willing 
to pay the supreme price that you may live in peace and happiness, 
in the comfort and sanctity of your own homes, and they ask you, 
in return, to do your bit. 

Oh, and yet you don't realize now what it is. We were forced 
into this war finally, after what? After that flag, which had 
never yet borne the record of being defiled, had been besmirched 
and insulted ; and not only that, but our very national honor had 
been trampled under foot, our citizens had been murdered on 
the high seas ; for the moment Germany declared that war zone 
and told us where we could and where we could not go, she might 
just as well have told us that we could not go outside of our 
three-mile limit. No nation can tell an American, so long as he 
conducts himself as such, whether or when or where on the high 
seas, he can go. But for every single boat that lies whitening 
in the depths of the Atlantic, for every single American human 
life that has been sacrificed for this tyrant, this German murderer, 
I tell you, Uncle Sam has rendered a bill and not until his ap- 
proval is on that bill, will this world be safe for democracy. 

But we have sent thousands of our boys, and we have got to 
send five million men to the firing line. How many of you men 
know that it takes four soldiers to handle every other soldier on 
the line ? Remember that a million men "over there" don't mean 
a million men on the firing line. I attended a banquet recently 
with one of our great military strategists, in which he made the 
remark that it would take five American boys in khaki to handle 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 145 

every German. That German is there behind almost impregnable 
force, inviting you, "if you want me, come and get me." Ordi- 
narily, in normal times, I would take any one of our boys in khaki 
and match him against any five Germans in the world ; but that 
brings us to the point of not dodging the issues as they are. 

Make the sacrifice. Remember that Germany has been suc- 
cessfully, connivingly and secretly striving for this very catas- 
trophe for the last forty-seven years. We knew it; we saw it; 
but we felt as every great, Christian, diplomatic nation did too, 
that it would never be allowed to come to the preparation and 
murder of millions of the flower of youth of the countries of the 
civilized world. 

Take Canada: For the first time, General Milburn showed 
me a cablegram announcing casualties, Canada's sacrifice. You 
think you have done your bit, you think that America has sacri- 
ficed and is doing her part. Why, it is like a peace conference 
as compared with what that great ally, and England and France 
have to this moment done. Four hundred and six thousand Ca- 
nadian boys, the very flower of Canada, out of a population of 
approximately eight million, 406,000 have gone over seas, and in 
exactly two months, or eight weeks ago, when General Milburn 
for the first time gave out the figures, he said that 186,000 had 
casualties. Think of what that means, you men. Just compare 
the pro rata, the American population, to get America's price. 
That is all you have got to do, if you think there won't be crape 
on every other door in every American city. You take England. 
Look at what she has done. The first thing you see in England 
to-day, is that England is at war, and it is the business of war 
to win. Everything is laid aside except that very object. We 
must win, but they go on paying their supreme penalty and price 
without a murmur ; and let me tell you, that these very atrocities, 
these very horrors, these unspeakable crimes against women and 
girls even, the butchery of soldiers in arms, the impaling of babes 
and handing them to their half-crazed mothers, have been only 
a part of it. 

Up to Germany's entrance into war, the nations had solemnly 
agreed — I, myself, was in the Hague on the very day that this 
treaty was signed — the Ambassador of that murderer, William, 
agreeing to respect the rights of non-combatants and neutrals 
and follow the international laws of nations ; and up to Ger- 
many's entrance into this war, they had been considered a civilized 
nation. To-day Germany stands branded before the whole world 
as having broken every single law of God and man — every single 
one. She has respected nothing. She sent her men to destroy 
wantonly our commercial life — and right there it brings me to a 



146 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

point which perhaps is as grave within as the enemy without, and 
that is, this propaganda, this enemy within our midst. 

And while a world can forgive almost any crime, to-day I 
tell you that the most despicable creature on God's earth that 
calls himself a man and breathes the breath of life, is an ingrate. 
And I brand von Bernstorff as the king of ingrates, a man who, 
a Minister, came to this country and under the very guise of his 
highly exalted office was immune from our law, who with one 
hand partook of our hospitality and enjoyed our social life, and 
with the other hand was trying to destroy our commercial life by 
imbroiling us with our neighbors, Mexico and Japan. It will 
go down to the crack of doom as the blackest military page ever 
written, and that was where his dirty hireling not only defiled a 
fellow-legation's code, but von Luxburg issued that order which 
to-day is looked upon as the vilest, most damnable order that was 
ever issued from a human mouth, that spurlos versunkt. Noth- 
ing more brutal will ever go down in history than the taking of 
those twenty-one men, removing their life-belts and their life- 
boats, and then leaving those souls to fulfill that damnable spurlos 
versunkt. Nobody will ever know how many souls have paid 
that penalty. But a great Deity interposed. One of those men 
was spared to bring back that order of German intrigue. 

I tell you that America hates an ingrate. Even a dog will not 
bite the hand that feeds him, but that is just a part of Prus- 
sianism to-day, and it is nothing more or less than the utter anni- 
hilation of everything opposed to Germany. It is nothing more 
or less than a cool, calculating, deliberate march to murder. That 
is all. 

In the first place, Germany, while her big men were masquer- 
ading before the world as statesmen, in reality they have proved 
themselves to be the rottenest, most colossal blunderers the world 
has ever seen. She had the effrontery and the audacity to believe 
that Italy, the very country which she had robbed of her Adriatic 
provinces, would cast her lot with Germany and Austria. Aus- 
tria! who had grabbed her railroads and banks and commerce 
with a firm German grip which was not pleasant to feel. 

And then Belgium — and when I say "Belgium" my heart 
goes out to those poor souls — if you knew the horrors and the suf- 
fering that patient little Belgium has borne, the very spirit within 
you would rise up and call "Vengeance." I could tell you things 
that have happened in Bergium that would freeze the blood in your 
veins. Don't go out from here and say these atrocities are hear- 
say. They have been minimized a hundred times where they 
have been magnified once. But Germany thought that Belgium, 
for the sake of peace, would allow that great German fighting 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 147 

machine to cross over and make an armed camp of her country, 
with the ultimate, certain destiny of Antwerp as a German sea- 
port town. You must remember that all along, Germany had 
felt that England would not enter this conflict. On that mem- 
orable day of August 4th, 1914, I know that the German Am- 
bassador had sent word to his imperial master at Potsdam that 
he was unable to say for the life of him just what England would 
do in the event of war between France and Germany. The very 
next day England staggered the world by her declaration of war 
against Germany, and that same Ambassador was constantly 
watched day and night to prevent him from committing suicide 
because of his inability to get word to his master of England's 
position in the situation. 

Do you know that the German Ambassador to France ap- 
peared in public places in the city of Paris and invited insult? 
So acute did the situation become that the Prefect of Police issued 
declarations imploring the people not to offer any umbrage to 
this man, that his sole object was to fasten responsibility on 
France. 

And lastly, England. Germany knew that England was having 
troubles with her own armies. It was a matter of record that 
the English Army officers had resigned their commissions rather 
than fight against their own men in the Ulster uprising, and Ger- 
many had the audacity to believe that England, for the sake of 
peace, could be bribed into a state of degraded pacivity, while 
she crushed her ally, France. 

Do you know that von Jagow literally wept when he was un- 
able to convince the English Ambassador that an international 
treaty was nothing but a mere "scrap of paper"? In failing to 
realize that England possessed a national sense of honor, a thing 
that was an absolute stranger to Germany, which Britons to the 
end of the world would defend with their lives and their last dol- 
lar, I tell you again, von Jagow and his- partners committed a 
gigantic, colossal German blunder, a blunder which even a child 
with a simple taste of history never would have made. To-day 
the blundering of the Imperial William and his cabinet stand out 
as plainly as the pyramids of Egypt. Germany had judged Eng- 
land by herself. 

Lastly, we come to America, a country of money-loving peo- 
ple. We were making money so fast in this country that it be- 
came a question of how to spend it. Germany knew all this, 
through her great espionage system which covered every foot of 
civilized territory, and she knew to a gun and a man what we 
had, what England and the other Allied countries had. Through 
that system she knew that we were a people "slow to anger"; 



148 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

i 
' \. i ,-w n the 

J in the 
j 

he verj \ erge of w ai 

i 

ended 
- ■■' patient 

A- 
ovej 
die words 

Howe\ v ac oss the sea, across 
the ec 

. e was .-. man within tho 
. ■ . 

merely 
ask ■ . - . and « 

s 
>ur hands 
\ U I until then 
willy . ake to \\ in 

.: and it is 

--. 

o has 
p eat 

raare- 
necks - i it yet At the 

.': say W 

>'■ > like? He has a 

looks just ex 
so! 

is 1 

: 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR i4«j 

thai Hell over there, has been the British fled and the French 
Army. Not down to the crack of doom will we ever be able 
to pay the debl thai v. o England and France and [taly 

Yon don't know what it is. Why, to day France is bled 
white. I don't mean bled white in one way, from fear; I mean 
from lack of men. To Hay she has reached the end of her tether. 
She is crying to us to take the pla< e of the thirty million man- 
power of I'n ia v.hi' li is to day eliminated from the contest, e i ti 
from ili': point of view of the defensive. Some weeks ago, the 
least we hoped was that we might form something out of this cha- 
oti< Russian State, which might mean somewhat of a mild de- 
feni iv on the Western from ; and to 'lay America has been asked 
to fnl the breach of a thirty million man po 

Wc owe France a debt that only God Almighty knows the 
magnitude of; France who loaned us her money during our great 
struggle and men who sacrificed their lives that this country 
might be what it is to day; and now she is calling for help. She 
is asking yon to come and help her. AikI J tell you that while 
America stands for free speech and fr<<; thought, f would hate to 
think thai there was a man living to-day in America who at this 
time would think or say ill of America. France is calling. Italy 
has made one of the greatest defensive moves that has < 
known. Awl that retreat at the Battle of the Marne — if you 
knew the inside of it -will go down in military history as the 
greatest piece of military strategy that the world lias ever known. 
Not only has General Joffre been the Saviour of the Maine. 
This I can say truthfully, that to-day he is the Saviour of the 
workl. That was a magnificent piece of strategy. 

\'< ferring once more to your fluty, let me remind you again 
that those boys- -my boy is fighting your battles; they ask for no 
reward. They only ask you to come and be big enough for the 
task. This is no time for destrw live criti< ism. It is a time when 
every man may lay aside everything personal and turn his ener- 
gies to this great task which confronts the nations in the world. 

Those hoys in the war: Why did you, the first time the 
ualty list was published, why did every eye in this ^reat eountry 
Scan with burning eyes that list, why? For the same reason, I 
think, that there might he amon^ that list some boy of some friend 
or neighbor. Is it necessary for Amerirans to see newspapers 
filled with column after column, filled with the dead, to see some 
transport filled with the flower of our youth, before we win ? Xo ! 
A thousand times no! America will awake, but I say in the words 
of that immortal soldier, "For God's sake, hurry up." 



150 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 



THREE: HONORABLE WILLIAM M. CALDER 

United States Senator 

You had at your meeting last Saturday two men who have 
contributed more to the legislation enacted at Washington since 
we declared war, than any other two members of either the 
House of Representatives or the Senate. Senator Chamberlain 
has had charge in the Senate, not only of all the important bills 
dealing with the war problem, for he is Chairman of the Sen- 
ate Committee on Military Affairs, but, because of the fact that 
the Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture refused to han- 
dle the legislation dealing with the conservation of food, he was 
also called upon to take charge of that measure during the two 
long months that it was under consideration in the Senate last 
summer. 

He came to you with an extraordinary amount of information 
and with a knowledge of the affairs of the Government unexcelled 
by any other man at Washington. He got in serious trouble be- 
cause of his speech here last Saturday, and, perhaps I ought to 
refrain from following in his footsteps. 

Senator Chamberlain is a member of the same party to which 
the President belongs. I am not; and perhaps for that reason, 
it would be more improper for me to criticize than it was for 
him. Many of us at Washington have been exceedingly careful 
concerning our criticisms about the things that have displeased us. 
There are those of my party who have often felt constrained to 
express their opinions, but have been afraid that we would be 
charged with playing politics. Let me say to this audience there 
has been no political speech uttered in the Senate by a Republican 
in serious criticism of the Government; and solely because we 
were fearful that what we said might be misconstrued. A dis- 
tinguished resident of this State said at a little private gathering 
in Washington the other day that he thought this was the "open 
season" for telling the truth ! 

We Republicans in Congress, in the main, have voted for 
every single thing asked for by the Government, dealing with 
the war. Your two Republican Senators and every Republican . 
Representative from this State have, without exception, on every 
occasion, stood by the President. When the Draft Bill was 
enacted some months ago, many more Republicans, in proportion 
to the size of our representation in both Houses, voted for this 
measure than did the gentlemen of the President's party; and so 
I think it can fairly be said that we have not unjustly found fault. 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 151 

Now, how far can men go in criticism, so that criticism may 
be helpful? We have gone along now, for nearly ten months. 
It seems to me the time has arrived when men have a right to 
speak out fairly and honestly, always sticking strictly to the truth. 
I think it is just to say that our Secretary of War has done pretty 
well. He has had a great problem ; but the trouble is not so 
much with him as with the neglect to get ready months before 
we went into the war. The Secretary of War has failed to un- 
derstand the magnitude of the problem. It has seemed to me 
for many months that what we needed at Washington was just 
plain, business planning. If we had planned last Spring for 
our coal situation, if we had just had some one in charge of 
coal matters — I mean some one with knowledge of the coal 
business — I am certain we would have had no trouble in sup- 
plying the needs of the people. If we had had some one who 
had knowledge of shipbuilding at the head of the Shipping 
Board from the beginning, and had kept him there, we would 
have had no trouble with our shipbuilding scheme, and so right 
down the line. 

I am hopeful that, inasmuch as we have begun to criticize con- 
structively, that when the President gets over being angry, he 
will realize that no one is trying to drag him down, but that every 
single one of us at Washington is more interested, much more 
interested, a hundred-fold more interested, in winning this war 
than we are in taking party advantage. At the same time I 
don't think it is fair that because we may differ with, the Presi- 
dent in party politics, that we should be asked to lie down com- 
pletely and give up our party. 

I am going to make a statement that will be interesting, and 
I hope I shall not offend any Democrats who may be here. We 
are going to have a Congressional election in New York City in a 
few weeks to fill vacancies caused by the resignation of four 
Democratic members of Congress. These gentlemen resigned 
their seats to better their conditions ! I ask if it will be unpa- 
triotic for the members of our party to contest for those four 
seats ? 

As against the record of these four members, it can be pointed 
out that four Republicans also resigned their seats in Congress, 
not to better their financial condition, but to offer their lives for 
their country. One of these, a man who served ten years in 
the House of Representatives with me, Major Gardner, has al- 
ready given up his life. Another, a Representative from the 
District just below where this Club House is situated, Congress- 
man La Guardia, is now with the Aviation Corps in Italy. An- 
other, a Republican from Ohio, is Lieutenant Colonel in the Na- 



152 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

tional Army; the fourth, a private soldier enlisting from the 
State of Washington, is with the Army, at Camp Meade. And so 
I submit it is fair to maintain that Republicans in Congress have 
done their best to help the Government, and will continue to do 
so until the war is over. 

There is one thing that has troubled me much, and it is a 
thing which I fear we haven't quite taken care of properly. The 
gentlemen present, who have studied the Russian problem, I am 
sure, realize the difficulties of it and our neglect of it. In the 
days preceding the Russian Revolution, Russia was rilled with 
German propaganda. We made no effort to offset it. The 
revolution came, a bloodless one, in fact, and a group of men 
liberated from the yoke of autocracy took hold of the government. 
I think it can fairly be said by those who know him that Kerensky 
is one of the greatest patriots this world ever produced. Keren- 
sky failed. He had to deal with a people of whom ninety per 
cent, could neither read nor write. He failed and another group 
have taken hold. Perhaps some of us do not sympathize with 
that group; but those men represent an element in Russia; and 
despite the fact that we may not be in accord with their views 
nor with the things they stand for, it seems to me the duty of our 
people at least to accord them sympathy and moral aid. 

If I had my way about it, I would have the Russian rulers 
of to-day understand that we are not engaged in an effort to de- 
stroy them. Theirs is the only government in Russia, and perhaps 
the very fact that it is a radical government, in the end, may con- 
tribute much for peace. Have you ever stopped to think of 
the danger in which Germany will be if she makes peace with 
radical Russia and the things that radical Russia stands for? 
Can Germany afford to make peace with that sort of a Russia? 
I am not a prophet and don't know what the next day or two 
may bring forth; but I rather doubt if Germany will make seri- 
ous peace with Trotzky and Lenine and the cause that they 
represent. And so, if I had my way about it, I would have 
to-day in Russia, working with our Red Cross and with the 
Young Men's Christian Association — both institutions doing won- 
derful work in Russia — I would have working with them a group 
of men who could instill in the minds of the Russian people the 
things that our country stands for and the sympathy that we 
have for all men who are struggling for liberty. 

We have difficult problems to solve to-day and we have such 
confidence in our own people that we are certain they will be 
solved, with the help of every man and woman in America do- 
ing their part. I hope that before this session of Congress ad- 
journs, legislation will be enacted tagging every man and woman 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 153 

from eighteen to sixty and then putting all of us to work where 
we can do the most good for the cause. The able-bodied men 
between twenty-one and thirty are required to go, and there is no 
reason why those of us who have passed thirty should sit idly 
by and let the boys bear the entire brunt of the conflict. 

And so, gentlemen, let there be a consecration anew to the 
great undertaking in which we are engaged. Our forefathers 
made sacrifices that this country might exist. The long years 
that they struggled and the many brave men who died willingly 
that we might have liberty here must indeed be an inspiration to 
every thinking man of to-day. And so in the days of the Re- 
bellion, when the men of this land struggled to keep the 
country together and to free a portion of the human race, what 
an inspiration these two great wars should be to the man of 
to-day ! 

Sacrifice ? We have made no sacrifice yet. We may be asked 
to make serious sacrifices, for the sake of our children and our 
grandchildren ; we should willingly make any sacrifice we are 
called upon to make, even if it means giving up our lives. We 
have but one life to give, as the great Nathan Hale said. Let us 
give it willingly. 



FOUR: BY REVEREND GEORGE R. VAN DE WATER, D.D. 

I am glad to see this congregation has increased since I turned 
my back on it. That is not the usual experience. 

I want to make a correction in the interests of truth. Al- 
though I have never been unwilling to sail under the flag of Co- 
lumbia, I am unwilling that you should any longer think that I 
am the present Chaplain of Columbia University. When the 
time came, after fifteen years of very pleasant and to me profit- 
ble service, as Chaplain of the University, when there was a 
resident body of students, it became necessary to have a resident 
Chaplain, and now for several years one of my naming and ap- 
proval has been the Chaplain of Columbia. 

During the last three or four years, there have been times 
when my interest in Columbia University made me wish that if 
possible some influence, even of a Chaplain, might be brought 
to bear to intensify the strength of its patriotism. But during 
the last year, my heart is rejoiced that Columbia University, 
through its Board of Trustees, has taken action and enacted leg- 
islation which, faithful to the tradition of Alexander Hamilton 
and other patriots of that estimable institution, has put patriot- 



154 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

ism to the front and magnified the liberty of the world over any 
consideration of professorial or academic freedom. 

Now, I am afraid I am banking a little too much on your 
physical strength, or if not that, your courtesy to me. I really 
do feel that you have heard enough, and I am so anxious that 
you should not forget anything you have heard, that I not only 
have gladly relinquished my time, but would stop this minute if 
I thought you would forget a word you have heard. But if age 
has taught anything and experience justified me in the conceit that 
I can perhaps sum up the questions that have been presented to 
you at this memorable meeting, I shall be glad to do something 
that will help the noblest cause that was ever presented to the 
mind and heart and conscience of man. 

First, you will allow me to confess to a little overconscious- 
ness, in your presence, of the fact that I am the only minister 
present, so far as I know. That does not make me feel lonely, 
but it makes me throw myself, as it were, on your charity. There 
have been reasons in the last few years why one should recall 
what Charles Lamb is said to have said on one occasion when 
he spoke of the human race as divided into three classes : men, 
women and ministers. 

I have been reading in the last twenty-four hours what I con- 
sider one of the strongest articles of the war, in the February 
number of the Atlantic Monthly, entitled — words familiar to me; 
I don't know whether they are to you — "And Peter Sat by the 
Fire Warming Himself." I tell you, I felt as if my skin had been 
taken off my body, and I was being larruped with it. Buy a copy 
and read it. It will do you no harm to buy also the December 
and January numbers, because there is an article in the January 
number on "The Decline of the Betini," written by two people 
of the name of Phillips, telling exactly the influence upon a com- 
munity of such rotten philosophy as has obsessed the mind of 
the Germans; and also in the December number of 1917 of the 
Atlantic Monthly there is one of the best articles written on the 
war, by Andre Cheradame, in which he hints at the important con- 
siderations of paying attention to the Eastern as well as the West- 
ern front, and giving our aid and assistance to a war of little gov- 
ernments of peoples desiring freedom. 

Now, my friends, certainly not since the Civil War, if during 
the Civil War, have the citizens of this country been compelled 
to face such calamitous conditions as exist to-day. They have 
been rehearsed to us in a very academic manner to-day. It was 
entirely proper and appropriate that when you were fresh, ready 
in mind to listen to the first utterances, you should have been 
asked to sit here as university students and listen to what was a 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 155 

recital of historic facts to justify the conclusions drawn; that, 
however horrible the action of our enemy, that action is entirely 
consistent with everything that history has recorded of that 
people. 

You know you may love a man never so much, but you love 
him a little more when he says the things you like to have said. 
I have been thinking for a month or two back, 'way back in my 
summer vacation, how marvelous it is that the present German 
attitude is a mere recrudescence of what I read in Julius Caesar's 
Commentaries on the Gallic War, and I was tickled to death when 
this historic scholar, — for that is what he is ; I don't care what 
he does — rehearsed for us the lines of history as given by that 
great general and analyst, Julius Caesar. 

We are, fortunately, past the time of urging preparedness. 
We are so scared to death we now urge speediness. I have been 
reading all my life that the wicked flee when no man pursueth ; 
but I have always observed that they make better time when pur- 
sued ! 

The wicked will flee: that is the message that I have to de- 
liver to you to-day. I want it to be the message of optimism, 
the last you hear to-day. Don't be discouraged; don't discount 
a thing you have heard said. Believe it all; anticipate what is 
sure to come. Don't be mean enough, when you have taken a 
Liberty Bond, to think you have sacrificed anything, because it 
is a good investment, unless the Germans come over here, and 
then there is no such thing as an investment. Don't criticize 
the income tax nor the surtax. No man is surtaxed who isn't a 
lucky dog. Any fellow, including myself, can afford to pay his 
income tax, so long as he can go to bed at night and feel he has 
paid his debts and has enough left to live on. If he has anything 
over two thousand dollars left for himself and his wife, he is 
a mean thing if he grumbles. 

Be willing to suffer. We shall have to, but I don't want you 
to suffer too much in mind. 

I have dismissed the speech I had in mind for this afternoon. 
I think there will be three points to my talk; three reasons for 
optimism. 

The first is, "A tree is known by its fruits." But the fruits 
are determined by its roots. And the roots of the German tree 
are rotten. Ideals rule the world. Whether the Germans be- 
lieve it or not, they rule the world, in Congress, in Wall Street, 
in Church. Ideals ; they are the things that stir the heart. What 
is there in a beautiful poem that sends a thrill through you or 
maybe a tear to your eye ? It is an old story, but "I love to tell 
the old, old story, of Jesus and His love." He who preached 



156 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

peace was indignant in the presence of monstrosity and wrong. 
He scorned not to call the religious leaders hypocrites and vipers ; 
He drove traders and traffickers out of the Temple with a whip 
lash ; and although He loved a sinner enough to die for him, He 
never compromised with sin. Nor, in my judgment, will any 
true follower of His, layman or clergyman, ever be so mealy- 
mouthed, so muzzle-mouthed that he will do any such miserable 
thing. 

Wrong is wrong, and right the day must win; 
And to doubt would be disloyalty; 
To falter would be sin. 

I am very, very sorry that there has been no voice speaking 
the English language in Church or in religious assemblies in 
America, in the ranks of the clergy, during this war, to compare 
with that magnificent "St. John," I call him, "At the Cross," Car- 
dinal Mercier of Belgium. 

It is some satisfaction to me to know, possibly due to the fact 
that I had experience and training under so gifted a Christian 
and military leader as General Greene, that from the very be- 
ginning of this war, I have been consistent, and have not felt 
called upon for any consideration of Germans in my parish, and 
I have them, to cease speaking out boldly against vice and wrong. 

Now, Germany is not going to succeed. Pray and pray; 
shell out for shells ; do your utmost to conquer an enemy, who 
unconquered, will conquer the world and destroy it. But, don't 
get discouraged. Germany cannot succeed. Do you know why? 
Because there is a God in the Heavens. And there is truth yet in 
the world, waiting for triumph. Old Samson gives us a riddle, 
and tells us that you can get honey out of a carcass. Shakespeare, 
in later times, with whom perhaps most of you are more familiar, 
tells us that there are 

" — Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing." 

Well, I take my religion and patriotism from Samson's riddle 
and Shakespeare's saying. I have already found a great deal of 
honey in this miserable old carcass of war. Why, we have come 
to have a vision. Everybody I see is better already. We would 
not have asked for it; but since it had to come, we have been 
getting nearer together, and may I not reverently say, we have 
been getting a good deal nearer to God. People are thinking now, 
seriously. You know, I go into a club now and then, and it is 
the rarest thing in the world ever to hear a champagne cork pop. 
Some men who have been accustomed to saying, "I am going to 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 157 

have a cigar" either don't smoke as much as they did, or they 
don't smoke at all. Where the bread used to be rolling around, 
now you pay ten cents more for having it, and get one little piece, 
not very good at that, and you are glad to do it, feeling that you 
must do without something. We will wear our old clothes. We 
will not order another pair of shoes when we have fifteen in the 
closet. We are ready and willing to serve a good cause. Women 
are knitting. I tell them, except during prayers, to knit in 
church. Children are asking what they can do, and they are 
glad to turn in their money for the war needs. All these things 
are the results of a beautiful vision of a world made free, of an 
oppressed people finding their liberty. And I will tell you an- 
other thing that is most magnificent. I have been worrying a 
good deal about it, because I have it very near to my heart. ^ I 
don't think many in the country ever succeed who think 'This life 
is the only life to live" ; but I have been surprised by the rank 
materialism that, largely due to German propaganda, expresses 
itself in this fashion : "Well, I don't know what is coming after. 
I am an agnostic," said with more pride than intelligence. Read 
your war books. Talk with the men in the trenches. What do 
they say? Listen: "Long life is nothing; a well filled life is 
everything." Of course, Nathan Hale lived longer than Methu- 
selah, because life is not made up of moments, days or years ; 
but of deeds; and the man who dies young living right, lives 
longer than the indulgent, satiated old citizen who cares only^ for 
self and for nothing beside as if Jesus Christ had never lived 
and as if He had never died. That is the honey we are getting 
out of the carcass, and that is the soul that we are getting out of 
evil, and that ought to make us cheerful and happy. 

Why, Mr. Senator, should you limit the age to sixty! Don't 
throw me out. I have been holding on to 63 until the first of 
January. After that, since I am 64 in April, I am ashamed to say 
"63." Immediately on the proclamation of war, I wrote to a state 
official and said, "What can an old fellow 63 do? I can do some- 
thing, and I want to do something." He wrote back to me : "Say, 
hold your horses, Chaplain ; it may be you can be a doorkeeper in 
some armoury." I answered and said: "Very well: I would 
rather be a doorkeeper in the house of patriots than to dwell 
among the tents of the pacifists." 

I have told you one reason why Germany won't succeed. Re- 
member about the tree, but don't forget what the other gentlemen 
have said. I shall never again believe in that tradition that a sol- 
dier is no orator. Such oratory! I don't wonder that they 
brought you back from abroad, and I don't wonder that you re- 
fused to introduce that German soldier to your lady companions. 



158 ONE HUNDRED PER CEN r AMERICAN 

. ■ [ guess i 

s, does s knows v ho 3 ou 

. i 
g 
is I 
s 

- c 
e been in 

ter is ev< . . they d 

leir minis.. - the exchequers 

on all 

sermon has A 

is wh; those ministers ig in the Is 

to, E 

le gosp* ng that is 

ie s 

ind idealism, a eluded : ght can make right. 

ig as there is that has 

theirs Nietzsche, 

schkt most gc do\* n urth from 

s ig " 
And the . - . third reason why Germany can't win. Its 
courage is nothing but bluff and bluster. Now, I have been in 

Germany. I have been among- those who ed its mo- 

vers k and thought mat the Germans ; . i ex 

than I have learned they have been, wonderful inventors in 

making c er ling is t n Germany." but must 

. d everywhere : but I c distinctly reeall one time tray- 

n in Germany. There were four or five Americans. 

es an gentlemen, in : ig when there entered a 

Germs r. As sc ime in that compartment, they 

aiking was as Lord was in His holy temple : 

let all the earth keep siler. e Him." I : Iked down 

the Unter der Linden and have seen those little fellows coming 

down, clanking their s ind even a little German dog will 

..way. That is not courage: that is bluster: that is bluff. 

Real couragf - in any such way as 

secretly mustering millions of men and then trampling down the 

children of Belgium to get tc - '-hey can bombard 

another nation. A really courageous nation will not stoop to 

such low scheming practice have in that country. A man 

with an ounce of humanity flowing in his veins would never 



VARIED ASPECTS OF THE WAR 159 

attempt to justify such abominable murders as were committed 
on the seas in the sinking of the Lusitania. r, I could 

tell you things that have been told me by th Con- 

sistent with their philosophy, and according to their kir 
courage, they can stretch a nude mother in the style of cruci- 
fixion and hold her baby before her dying eyes, in order to scare 
a community into submission. That is the fact. As for the 
devils who do such deviltry, I suppose we might at least offer the 
explanation, if not the excuse: 

"Theirs not to reason why; 
Theirs not to make reply; 
Theirs but to do or die." 

And for that reason, you will find no individual courage, as 
you will find in nations that have an exalted idea of free 
You will find no men scaling walls as ours did in China and going 
over alone, in order that they may accomplish something for their 
lofty ideals. There is with Germans no individual initiative. 
They will fight en masse; they cannot fight alone. They haven't 
the courage ; and with all their talk about strength and might, they 
have not those individual characteristics that, in the end, will en- 
able them to win. You can puncture a German's pomp with the 
point of a pin. 

Men and brethren, get this idea fixed in your hearts and 
minds: 

Our cause is just; 
In God we trust; 
Conquer we must. 



FIFTH DISCUSSION 

FEBRUARY SECOND, 1918 

WHAT HAVE WE AGAINST THE CENTRAL EUROPE 
POLICY OF GERMANY? 



WHAT HAVE WE AGAINST THE CENTRAL EUROPE 
POLICY OF GERMANY? 



ONE: BY PROFESSOR ALBERT BUSHNELL HART 

Harvard University 

I trusi that I shall be successful in living down the two han- 
dicaps which have been placed about my innocent neck by the 
toastmaster. In the firsl place, that I should be here to adum- 
brate so famous a speaker, so renowned a publicist as Mr. B 

And the only remedy that I see for that. stat< of things is the 
suggested one ; that you may have the substitute to-day and the 
true thing at a later meeting! Again,, the chairman has made 
things delightfully easy for me by his plain, matter-of-fact intro- 
duction. It is on record that the great Daniel Webster, on an 
occasion in Congress, when a fellow member saw fit to say things, 
less, apparently, than your toastmaster has said, replied with a 
classic phrase drawn from his own youthful experience in New 
Kngland. He simply turned and said, "Git out!" 

It seems fitting enough that I should be before the Republican 
Club of New York to-day, inasmuch as I have been informed on 
most credible authority that at the age of two J participated in 
the campaign of 1856, giving all my influence in behalf of the 
Republican candidates of that day! Xor did my Republican ex- 
perience end there; for one of your members has graciously 
remembered that we were both members of that famous Repub- 
lican Convention at Chicago in J 9 12, the most prolific of all con- 
ventions, since its result was twin candidates ! 

I am going to speak to-day of a subject which is to my 
mind, the most significant and important before the Ameri- 
can people; the more significant because we are only waking up 
to what it means. Here we are, in the midst of a prodigious war, 
the greatest in the history of mankind, making such efforts as this 
country has never made, and, please God, we never shall need 
to make after the war is over; and yet everything goes easily, 
we have had an excellent luncheon, and it appears that the scar- 
city of coal does not extend to the Republican Club. It is amaz- 
ing how easily and quietly we go about. We are just learning 
for the first time the difficulty as to fuel, and a smaller difficulty 

163 



164 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

at present as to food are really the first suggestions to most of 
us, that we are not in normal times. We belong to a com- 
fortable, well fed nation, in which we expect ease and we are fed 
from day to day. We have the most tremendous advantage over 
all the other contestants in this, that we do produce our own food ; 
we feed ourselves ; we have supplies for our allies and friends. 

We are in the war, however, and we are just beginning to 
bring together the reasons why the United States of America, so 
many thousands of miles from the seat of hostilities, apparently 
so far removed from those international discussions and rival- 
ries, dissensions and greed, which are at the basis of the pres- 
ent war, we are only just finding out, ourselves, why it is that 
the United States of America must forsake the position which it 
has occupied for so many years as the greatest peace nation on 
earth, as the one great power which has been able to maintain 
itself with the smallest expenditure for military and naval de- 
fenses, in proportion to its population. 

Those reasons I am going to summarize briefly, because they 
all touch, eventually, on the theme of the address that I am going 
to try to make to you to-day. We have gone into this great world 
war, first, for the defense of the rights of neutrals; for that is 
the first thing that came to our attention, and the Lusitania is 
the key word. Again, we are fighting for the defense of the rights 
of nationalities, the right of the gathering and assembling of a 
body of people who are ready to live together as a nation, to live 
so without asking for permission of somebody else. Eventually, 
we are fighting for the defense of our own territories, a point 
to which I will recur; beyond that for the defense of democracy, 
our own and the democracy of the world. And, finally, the main 
object of war, — of this war as of every war, — is not to fight, 
but through fighting, finally to reach a state of peace and quiet. 

We are fighting to bring about peace, a peace, however, that 
shall be peaceful, a peace that will stay when it is made. 

Now, none of these objects, with one or two exceptions, seem 
very closely connected with the principles and conditions of Cen- 
tral Europe. Our allies lie on the western fringe, Great Britain, 
France and Italy. Our traditions are permanently against taking 
an interest in the affairs of Central Europe. It is true that in 
1849 Dudley Mann was sent by the United States Government 
to Hungary with a commission authorizing him to recognize the 
Republic of Hungary if, in his judgment, it was a permanent 
and stable government. In his judgment, it had not reached, and 
never did reach, that state. That instruction, therefore, could 
not be carried out. 

We have nothing to say about the Polish Question. There 






GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 165 

was an insurrection in Poland in 1893. The United States was 
silent. The only form in which the United States has taken any 
share in the internal diplomacy of Central Europe, or in their in- 
ternational relations, from the beginning, has been when we 
have undertaken to secure the rights of Jews in Roumania and 
in Russia. Our State Department has departed from the usual 
principle by setting forth that American citizens and persons not 
citizens at all ought to be treated with humanity. 

Nevertheless, contrary to all our propositions and our former 
traditions, through the formal action of the Federal Government, 
we are now distinctly, clearly, strongly, deeply, and permanently 
interested in what goes on in Mid-Europe. Way beyond the 
Italian front and the western front, there is now going on in 
that part of the world a process in which you, you, you, your 
children and your grandchildren are interested, which, if we are 
not able to adjust or to aid to adjust, will, to remote generations, 
bring upon our part of the human race, our bit of it, evils which 
are Jiard to conceive in advance. 

In order to make that clear, I shall say a few words then of 
what the actual conditions are now in Mid-Europe. What were 
they in 1914? Well, there was a group of powers, Germany, 
Austria-Hungary, half a dozen Balkan States, a small part of 
Turkey in Europe, Russia — I leave out of the accounting the 
Scandinavian powers, those that were on the fringe, Switzerland. 
Their policies had been defined for nearly a century. There had 
been certain consolidations, but very little transfer of territory, 
except in the Balkan region. That, of course, was in 1914. 
To-day, three and a half years after the breaking out of the war, 
you have got a different Europe, and the war may result, con- 
ceivably, in a redistribution of boundaries. 

You have now a nation of such power, might, majesty and 
of such ambition as the world has never known, not for two thou- 
sand years. The empire guided from Berlin, including the Ger- 
man Empire, the Empire of Austria-Hungary, the Kingdom of 
Bulgaria, the Sultanate of Turkey — that empire is at this moment 
an accomplished fact. There is only one government; it is a 
great consolidated power. There are, of course, local authori- 
ties ; there are in Turkey, Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary assump- 
tions of being independent. They are no more independent than 
the county of New York is independent of the State of New 
York, or of the Union. Turkey is no more independent, in any 
proper sense, than the State of California is of the United States. 
Austria is no more independent than the Central Western States 
of the United States. Nominally, she considers it a temporary 
matter, simply an exigency of war. 



166 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Germany happens to be the most powerful state, and in a 
military sense, a great organizer. Where the German troops come, 
there is victory expected. When the Austrians gave way in Ga- 
licia the Germans pulled them out. When the Austrians gave way 
in the west, in the neighborhood of the Adriatic, it was Germany 
that came to the rescue. When the Austrians were three times 
defeated by little Serbia, one against ten and yet three times 
victorious, it took the force of the German Empire to subdue that 
proud and splendid little people, the Serbians. But for the Ger- 
man aid, organization, officers and ships, the Allies would be in 
Constantinople to-day. Germany saved the Turks from the ex- 
tinction of their empire, which was certain except for the in- 
fluence of Germany. 

But Germany has not performed these services out of friend- 
ship or without hope of reward. The expectation of Germany 
is that those three so-called independent States shall together, 
with one little break, make a complete unit, extending from the 
North Sea across to the Persian Gulf. Unless we, the United 
States of America, prevent it, the Germans will accomplish the 
task of making that tremendous, that powerful, that rich, that 
populous, that amazing empire. Why, Alexander the Great would 
turn over in his grave at that plan. He wept because there were 
no more worlds to conquer. The Germans have found another, 
the world of Central Europe, of which he knew nothing. 

The power at which the Germans now aim in that Central 
Europe combination is unexampled since the Fall of the Roman 
Empire, which empire comprised a little different grouping of 
territories, but almost as many — perhaps quite as many — square 
miles. There is a difference also, in the fact that the Roman 
Empire fell because she could no longer defend her frontiers; 
and the Germans make a German frontier wherever they go, by 
building their railroads and transporting their troops. 

That whole plan of Mid-Europe is a plan which we now know 
very considerably antedates the war. The proofs are accumu- 
lating. You are doubtless familiar with the numerous collec- 
tions of extracts from German statesmen and writers, upon the 
plans of the German people, the German Empire, the German 
Government, plans which go as far back, certainly, as 1893, when 
a commission of German officers in active service went through 
Asia Minor and Mesopotamia and made elaborate investigations 
and reports. 

A few years after that, irt 1898, the German Emperor went to 
Turkey. Eventually, he went to Damascus. It was there he 
announced that he was the friend of all Islam all over the world, 
and practically asked them to rally around him. Certainly by that 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 167 

year, 1898, it was in the minds of German statesmen that a new 
career was to be open before Germany. To that career as planned 
many different terms were applied. The Germans themselves 
have since formed a Pan-Germanic League. That is one term, 
a term that is most familiar ; but Pan-Germanism does not cover 
the whole of that plan, because it includes many non-Germanic 
elements. 

The whole plan of Germany, the organization of Central 
Europe, of course, goes back further, to that German concep- 
tion of the world, of the state, of the individual, particularly of 
the Teuton, which is the cause of such fearful woes to mankind. 
From day to day, the German newspapers, the German publicists, 
the German colleges have been setting forth that German concep- 
tion of the world. Ten years ago, even twenty years ago, fifty 
years ago, they began the process of grinding, grinding into the 
minds of schoolchildren, of secondary students, of university stu- 
dents, of professional men, of business men, of military men, of 
all the conscripts that went into the army, grinding, grinding the 
bottom principle that the German was superior to all other 
people on earth; that it was the duty of the German to extend 
his civilization as far as he could reach, and, further, that it 
was his duty to extend it at any cost of suffering to any other 
people than Germany. 

I have no cause to feel unfriendly to Germany or the Ger- 
man people. Thirty years ago I was a student ; I secured a de- 
gree which I fairly earned from the Universitly of Freiburg. 
You can take Freiburg away ; but you can't take away from me 
the consciousness that I did my job there, and that I was proud 
to have among my friends German-Americans. There are no 
better people in the world than those people. We are warm 
friends still, and the best of Americans, but we cannot deny 
that there is no German-American here or anywhere else who is 
not aware that the spirit of the present German Empire is a 
spirit which looks upon the German as a superman, raised above 
the rest of the human race by superior intellectual endowments, 
by superior organization, by his superior sense of his political 
machine, which not only makes him superior to other people, but 
enables him to trample on the rest of the human race. The pres- 
ence of that feeling in the minds of Germans the present occu- 
pancy of Europe proves too clearly. Day after day comes the 
word from distressed Belgium, almost the same from Northern 
France — the same story of murder and robbery. 

One of my colleagues has been Professor Depries of Louvain, 
Belgium. He is now going back to help prepare to reorganize 
his country. He told me the other day that the Germans were 



168 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

blowing to pieces the blast furnaces, blowing up the heavy ma- 
chinery that could not be taken home to Germany, so that when 
the war was over, the Belgians would have nothing. And a great 
bronze dragon which for about five centuries has adorned a spire 
in the city of Ghent, the conquerors of that place, the Germans, 
have taken down and melted it as old metal. Evidently, they 
expect to leave Belgium and they intend to leave it so that it will 
take the Belgians a generation to reestablish themselves as they 
were when this war broke out. 

Again, in Serbia and Montenegro — poor Serbia! It is but a 
few months ago that I was in that country, in fact, in all the 
Balkan countries, and never have I more enjoyed associations 
than I did with the cultivated Serbians whom I met at Belgrade. 
They are a fine race, a musical race, a democratic people, a race 
of plain farmers, with few wealthy men among them, a race 
capable of large progress, a race reaching out, as was its God- 
given right, to associate themselves with others of the same 
nationality, to form a larger nation. Serbia has been murdered. 
Not less than one million people, perhaps two million, of those 
people have given their lives in order to demonstrate to the satis- 
faction of the Germans that they were the superior power, and 
that any one who stood in their way should be ground into dust. 
If you want a proof that the Germans are obsessed, beset, insane 
with the feeling of their superiority to any other race of men, 
and their right to trample on the prostrate bodies of other na- 
tions, then go to Armenia; for it is the literal God's truth that 
if the German Ambassador in Constantinople or his German 
General in command of the troops of the German Emperor sit- 
ting in Berlin had interposed his will, those massacres would 
have been stopped in twelve hours and have saved the lives of 
two million people. 

The principle of the Germans is, "If the rock fall on the 
pitcher, the pitcher shall be broken ; and if the pitcher fall on 
the rock, the pitcher shall be broken." Well, what does that 
mean to us? If Germany orders it, we can't help it; we can't 
put an army into Serbia or Armenia: we are not in a position 
to save those people. We do deeply sympathize with them, and 
express our sympathy by the sending of that magnificent list of 
physicians to stamp out the typhus in Serbia, by feeding the 
Belgians, by a thousand acts of interest and sympathy with all 
the distressed people. We do deeply sympathize with those 
people, but we are not able to reach them. Why should we 
concern ourselves? We are going in on the western front. We 
are going to help protect ourselves; don't let us forget that. 
Undoubtedly, there is a great altruistic influence in the minds 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 169 

of the American people; but, at the same time, the best coast 
defence of the United States to-day is the western line between 
the Germans, and the French and British. That is holding off 
the warships of Germany indefinitely. 

But why are we to be so concerned with the conditions in 
Central Europe? Because the condition of Central Europe is at 
present the proof that the Germans aim at nothing short of world 
sovereignty; that they have in their minds the Romans, and that 
they hope and expect to create a power which within a generation 
or two shall dominate the world, so that no state in the world 
can be independent except by their consent ; that wherever Ger- 
mans go there are going to follow them their men to protect them 
and protect their power. 

The consciousness of this state of affairs, of this tremendous 
danger to mankind, has, I own, been slow in coming to me, and 
I own that, for a good two years, I had it in mind that the end 
of the war was going to be about the status quo. It is perfectly 
clear that Germany is excessively anxious for peace, because 
her people are rising in great numbers to demand bread. The 
voice of the German people is, "If you can't give us bread, then 
give us peace." The Germans are exceedingly anxious to re- 
turn to the status quo; the whole attitude of Germany is a desire 
to return to status quo. They will return to the status quo; but 
take the four powers which have been gathered together in this 
conspiracy ; — it is an international conspiracy — those are the ends 
that are behind it, and the purposes that control the Germans' 
willingness to return to the status quo. 

Undoubtedly, they would leave Belgium and Northern France. 
Leave what ? The bare shell, a few walls sticking up. Forty-six 
thousand houses have been destroyed in Belgium — destroyed 
absolutely, blown up, burned — and as many more looted and left 
desolate. The peasantry throughout the country apparently have 
all been looted and all been destroyed. That is what it means to 
return to the status quo. 

But we want peace; we want a peace that will relieve the 
world from this frightful sacrifice of life. We want a peace 
that will bring our own sons back from the .lenches, nobody 
more than I. There are a great many fathers here; I am one 
of them. My two sons are over here at Astoria, in Uncle 
Sam's army, enlisted for the emergency, and their parents will 
see them through. Well, a hundred men here can say the^ same 
thing. There is no distinction in that; the only distinction is 
that I am expected as a man who has a stake in the war — my 
own children — to feel that there is a bigger stake than my sons, 
and that is the life of my country. And I sincerely believe that 



170 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

the consummation of the German program in Central Europe, if 
it is carried out, will mean the eventual death of popular govern- 
ment in the United States of America; that it will mean in the 
end either a self-consuming or an invasion of the United States, 
that it is time for us now to take measures. 

The German people may say it is very convenient for them 
to have a German Emperor. Everybody knows, however, that 
the German Emperor is perhaps less responsible than many other 
individuals in Germany, and although we have great authority 
to the contrary, I have never been able to believe that you can 
separate the German Government from the German people. If 
you were a German in Germany, you would say, "Oh well, with 
all its deficiencies, the Imperial Government has kept the invader 
out except for the little invasion of the Russians in the first weeks 
of the war. Our blood has not been spilt on our own soil. 
Furthermore, the Imperial Government has protected Germany 
from the fate of invasion which it has been suffering from for 
centuries." Germany has never been safe from the invader. 
In the Napoleonic times the country was covered with French 
garrisons. It has at least given them nationality and power. 

And, more than that, accumulated evidence shows that the 
leaders of German thought, the ministers, the professional men, 
the publicists, as well as the military men and the business men, 
have all united in this detestable theory of the supremacy of the 
Germans over all others. And as for the Emperor! Well, we 
might apply to him the gibe of the Englishman. "Who rules 
England? The King. Who rules the King? The Duke of 
Buckingham. Who rules the Duke of Buckingham? The Devil. 
Let the Duke look to it." 

Now let me describe a little more clearly what the actual 
conditions are, and this map which M. Savic has given us will, 
illustrate some points about which I wish to speak. 

What is this combination of four Powers? Well, Germany 
has sixty-eight million population ; Austria fifty-one million ; Bul- 
garia about eight million or nine million; Turkey had about 
twenty million at the beginning of the war. Turkey's population 
is much depleted, and depleted how ? By knocking out the brains 
of the best people in Turkey. They are the best people in the em- 
pire, and that is why they have been assassinated, to make room 
for Turks or Germans, who knows? at any rate, for some other 
immigrants they are cleared out of the way. You have those four 
Powers, extending eastward to Arabia and down the Mesopota- 
mian Valley to the Gulf of Persia, and south to the Mediterranean 
and the Black Sea on the north, and it even has a little territory 
outside the walls of Constantinople. Now, those four Powers, 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 171 

with perhaps one hundred and thirty million people, are now 
closely united. Why, take the military commands of the Presi- 
dent of the United States, which every soldier and every civilian 
obeys as the lawfully constituted authority in time of war, within 
the limits to which he applies it ; the will of the General Staff in 
Berlin is just as effective from end to end of that domain as the 
will of the British Government over its population or the will of 
the French over theirs. 

There is no longer an Austria-Hungarian Empire, and I don't 
mean to say that in the course of time there won't be a so-called 
Austrian-Hungarian Empire restored, with boundaries perhaps 
somewhat enlarged. I don't mean to say that Bulgaria and 
Turkey will not, if the Germans have their way, continue as 
nominally independent countries; but I do mean to say that 
there is no independence during war, and that it is not the pur- 
pose of the Germans that there shall be independence in time of 
peace. The German policy of extending its power may be sum- 
med up in two or three phrases. One of them is "Pan-German- 
ism." That does not cover in the least the present ambitions of 
Germany. Pan-Germanism, if it were carried out, would add 
to the Germans perhaps Holland, part of Belgium, on the ground 
that they are a Germanic people, the Germanic part of Switzer- 
land, the nine or ten millions of Germans in Austria, and that 
is about all. That is to say, you could enlarge by perhaps 
twenty or twenty-five millions, making a German population of 
ninety to one hundred millions in Central Europe, in which all 
the people would speak German in the course of time. A good 
many of them could be taught to think German! 

But that is not what is meant by Pan-Germanism, and we 
know by the indisputable testimony, both of public and private 
writings, when, for instance, the Emperor of Germany a few 
years ago announced that he was going to make it his duty — I 
quote him here — "It is my wish that, standing in closer union, 
you help me do my duty, not only to my own countrymen, but 
to the many thousands in foreign lands." That is, "I must protect 
them." That was in 1897. Just what did he mean? He meant, 
I suppose, Germans in English-speaking countries that were not 
able to resist the economic pressure of German visitors and Ger- 
man traders ; but it apparently means more than that. 

In 19 1 3 the German Government passed a new act with 
reference to citizenship. In many ways the principle is the same 
as that of an earlier act, but it is a great deal more explicit. 
A German who becomes naturalized in a foreign country, under 
the previous acts if he came back to Germany, severed his rela- 
tions. If he went back and severed his relations to us, of course 



172 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

his German citizenship might be resumed. Now comes the ex- 
pansion. In this new act there is a provision that while a citizen 
of a foreign country the German may remain inscribed as a 
citizen of his own country, if the consul in his neighborhood will 
endorse him. 

That is, that act was conceived to create that perfectly intol- 
erable situation wherever Germans went and settled, by which 
if a man swore that he gave up his allegiance to any foreign 
potentate and power, still, in his own mind, he was a citizen of 
Germany and was entitled to the benefits of German citizenship. 
Furthermore, it does not appear that certain extravagant German 
writers have been seized and sent to the trenches because they 
said that the Germans in Brazil and elsewhere in South America 
must be followed and protected by the Home Government. 

I don't like to think that the Germans are so far superior 
to the rest of mankind that they can make unfailing plans years 
in advance, and see them come out precisely as they desired. I 
am not willing to credit the Germans with superhuman sagacity, 
in view of the fact that when the war broke out, — with their 
vast system of intelligence, spies penetrating every country, this 
country, the City of New York, the ward and this street in which 
this building is situated, — I am not willing to believe that they 
are, after all, superhuman, when, in the face of all that, the Ger- 
mans went to war totally misconceiving the frame of mind of 
the Belgians, the British, the Irish, the Canadians, the Australians, 
the South Africans and the people of the United States of Amer- 
ica. Having made every miss out of a possible total of ten, I am 
not willing to admit that they are wise out of all the people on the 
earth ! 

Nevertheless, they have been a great deal wiser than we have 
in trade matters. A part of this whole pressure of Pan-Ger- 
manism is to plant Germans where they will do the most good. 
You meet people who have been to South America. You say 
to them, you having been away from that country seven or eight 
years, "How is the Bank of Venezuela getting along?" And 
they will tell you the Germans bought it. Or, how about the 
traction line of Buenos Aires? It got into German hands. The 
Germans have been planting all over the world wherever they 
could; they have been planting machines, partly trade, partly 
political, partly getting ready for the time when they could be 
made available. 

And Germany never forgets that one of the main objects of 
this war is to wrest out of the hand of Great Britain those 
magnificent fortified posts, islands, fortresses — Gibraltar, Malta, 
Aden and Colombia and Hong Kong — all about the world, those 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 173 

places where English ships can recoal and refit. Those are the 
places that have made possible the driving of German commerce 
and German commerce-destroyers from the seas. The Germans 
would like to have some of those, and there is no doubt that they 
were making preparations to have the right people in the right 
places to exercise the right influence, when the time came. 

In the first place, the Germans are perfectly willing to in- 
clude within Pan-Germany a considerable number of race ele- 
ments that are not German at all. For instance, in Posen, the 
German-Polish Province: are you aware that a little way north 
is Prussia, Prussia par excellence? And yet in Posen there are 
two hundred thousand people who can't speak any German, 
grown people ? They are Slavs ; they have been there for ages ; 
and they haven't yet succeeded in making that population swallow 
the German language ; but they are included in Pan-Germany. 

The Danes are included in Pan-Germany ; and, what is more, 
this conception of the status quo has been somewhat broadened, 
because the Germans now hold the whole of Poland and Lith- 
uania, and those Slavic people are to be incorporated in Pan- 
Germany. 

Furthermore, Pan-Germany could not be made to include 
only the German-speaking parts of Austria. People thought it 
would be very easy to transfer those ten million people. Do you 
realize that that would transfer that Catholic population over 
into a Protestant one. The bringing in of those people would 
just change the religious balance in the Empire, and as that 
division has frequently been reflected in the representation in 
the Reichstag, No. The Germans propose to include in Pan- 
Germany the nationalities enclosed in Austria. 

That is a thing that comes very close home to us. What have 
we got to do with the subdivisions of Austria? The President 
has said we have nothing to fear, provided a reasonable adjust- 
ment is made. What is Austria? It has about twelve million 
Germans, ten million Magyars. That is twenty-two million. And 
the rest of the population, twenty-nine million, is non-Germanic. 
The citizens of Hungary are a very gifted race of most interesting 
individuals, and yet they have accepted an artificial attachment to 
the German whom for centuries they hated and despised, and 
whom they were fighting with all their might as late as 1849. 

What about the Slavs? We have been told so much about 
the Slavs. The Germans had a great deal to say about the "wave 
of Slav barbarism sweeping over Europe." The Slavs are just 
as good Europeans as the Germans. They have been there just 
as long as the Germans. They are a people in many ways gifted. 
They are as capable of self-government as any other European 



174 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

people. There could not be a greater mistake than to put the 
Slavs down as a people of inferior mentality. They have been 
crushed to the earth for hundreds of years. 

Take the Serbians whom I saw in 191 3. They were just 
emerging out of the awful pressure of Turkey, just coming up. 
Now they are struck down again and dragged in the mud. 

You have got to reckon with the Slavs. Perhaps one hundred 
and twenty million out of one hundred and sixty million in Russia 
are Slavs. 

Have you ever met any of those business men of Bohemia? 
There is not a more hard-headed banker in this assembly, nor a 
keener professional or business man than the Bohemians I 
found over there. There had been a typhoon that had destroyed 
their sugar factory. People had been buried in the ruins. Sit- 
ting there in the hotel, exactly as Americans would have done, 
with their wives and children, sitting about the table, they were 
planning to rebuild their factory. And they set about it directly. 
They can take their part if they have a fair chance, side by 
side with the other races of Europe. Furthermore, you will 
observe that the Bohemians are essentially Slavic. When the 
Bohemians and the Serbians are on good terms, they can under- 
stand each other perfectly; but when they are not, neither can 
understand the other's language ! 

The Rumanians like to think they are Latins, because they 
have some Latin words in their language ; but they are practically 
Slavs. 

Well, either the world has got to settle down to the idea that 
the Slavs are to be beasts of burden, hewers of wood and carriers 
of water to the end of time, or you have got to admit that they 
have their rights. On that point the President is very firm. He 
is for the principle of nationality. We, as a nation, stand for 
the principle of nationality. We don't stand so hard when we 
come to our immediate neighbors; but there are several little 
races that we intend taking care of in Central Europe. We are 
profound supporters of the principle of nationality in small states. 
If you don't have small states, what are you going to have? 
Well, you are going to have one state. The world has expected 
that out of this great war there would come about a readjust- 
ment of Austria-Hungary. You know how, for centuries, the 
Magyars were thrust down as far as the Germans could thrust 
them. They tried to prevent the development of their leaders, 
their language and their national feeling. They never have been 
able to do it. 

Take the Serbians and their desperate condition. Out of 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 175 

that million Serbs you will have a nation if you will give them an 
opportunity. 

How is the United States affected by this extension of Mid- 
Europe into Asia? Well, there is no denying that Turkey is 
the great crime of Europe ; that a handful of unorganized Asiatics 
from Northern Asia, Mongolians, should have been able to ride 
down the great Greek Empire, the Balkan States, Hungary, 
where for a hundred years, they held dominion, — that Europe 
should not have organized against them. Let that be the lesson 
for us at this time. If only the Europeans had girded their loins 
and kept Europe for Europeans ! Unless the rest of mankind 
can organize against the Germans and the Turks, you are going 
to have another empire with the principles of Turkey. Do you 
realize that the Turks have always been in a minority in their own 
country? There have always been more people of the Christian 
races than of the Turks themselves. They are the poorest of 
governors — delightful people personally but poor governors. 
Put any ten Turkish people together and give them political rule, 
and they will treat you exactly as a German general does his foes ; 
only they treat their friends exactly as the Germans do their 
enemies ! 

If the Germans are allowed to restore the nominal status quo, 
with these four adhering Powers, all independent — simply agree- 
ing that they will be ruled by common interest — if they are al- 
lowed to make a customs union by which they will give each other 
advantages and so far as they can shut out the rest of the 
world, it means that the whole of the rest of the world suffers. 

The Empire they are planning will have a frontage of the 
Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the White Sea, the Caspian Sea, the 
Black Sea, the iEgean Sea, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, 
the Gulf of Persia. It will bring them within striking distance 
of the English communications through the Suez Canal. 

Jerusalem, the center of the Christian faith, the scene of the 
life, the works, and the walks of our Lord and of His death and 
burial, has been taken out of the hands of those who reject His 
religion; and if the Germans win, Palestine will invariably go 
back on some terms to Turkey. Of course, the Germans as a 
nation have a Christian form of worship and it is probable that 
there will be some protection for people, life and property in 
Jerusalem ; but it will be nominally Turkish ; that is, the Germans 
will perpetuate solely the conditions permitting the enormities 
of the previous system. 

When you get that empire, you will see a glad hand pre- 
sented to India and Central Asia, because that is where the ambi- 
tion of the Germans extends. In the first place, because the 



176 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

German policy is a policy of a world power of one great state, 
at least of a great European power; and all other powers in 
Europe and in Western Asia will live by the sufferance of the 
Germans. We have no territory there, but we have territory in 
other parts of the world. Can anybody doubt that if that 
empire is once established the next thing will be to send out 
creepers, the octopus arms, to other parts of the world or to 
other parts of South America? There is no evidence that the 
German has ever formed any definite plans for invading South 
America, but it is the natural outcome of German power. 
Wherever you have Germans, there you find a German Consul to 
protect them ; and wherever you have a German Consul, you have 
next a German warship to protect the Consul ; and then a Minister 
to protect the warship ! 

In the second place, that power is an autocratic power, a 
sublime and imperial power, going back, finally, to one man, the 
German Emperor. No, to a self-constituted group of autocrats 
in Germany, military men, choosing A, B, or C ; because he is an 
able man he shall be our statesman. If we don't like his type of 
statesmanship, out he goes ! It is perfectly idle to talk of the 
government being the government of the Hohenzollerns ; it is a 
government of a small group of persons with the control of the 
government in their hands. Even the Emperor may be the cork 
on that stream. Those are the people who are going to settle 
it. Of course, there is democracy in Germany; but the primary 
ideal, that the ultimate decision shall be made by the intelligent 
majority, by the people themselves, is contrary to this whole idea; 
because Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey have got to be subject powers, 
and do you think the people in Germany are going to be free? 

It is an attack on that principle which is dear to us. I knew 
a man once who had been a public man known in some centers, 
who made a visit to Germany in 191 1, had been in Africa and 
other places, came back greatly interested. "Why," he said, "I 
got to the point where I said, Tf I am introduced to another king, 
I shall cry.' ' : His point was this : He said, "Germany was the 
only country where I felt that every man, woman and child was 
my enemy ; not personally, I was treated with great respect ; but 
the feeling was that the United States was the enemy of Ger- 
many." Why? "Because," he said, "we have accomplished the 
attainment of wealth, power, eminence, by a road which the 
Germans think is unsuitable, by democratic government, and that, 
to the German mind, is an affront. 

Again, there is the question of commerce. That great Central 
European power is going to be a closed economic power. I 
say closed. Their principle will be to close it, so far as their ad- 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 177 

vantages will go, to other people, and to open it, by force of 
arms if necessary, where their trade is concerned. It is the most 
frightful principle. You take Germany feeding itself in the 
present war, and where would the rest of the people be? Ger- 
many is shut out, at present, from the sea. Under the new 
regime, Germany will have ports, thousands of miles apart, the 
whole route strung together by the Hamburg-to-Bagdad Railway 
which can be completed in a few months when the war is over. 
No, I wish no ill to any people because they are different 
from ourselves; we wish no destruction to Germany, per se ; but 
unless we are ready to arm, to fight and to persist, we shall find 
established on the other side of the world a government in which 
we have no share, and which will have a tremendous share in 
settling our destinies. 

TWO: BY DR. ROBERT M. McELROY 

Educational Director, The National Security League 

We are not dreaming dreams of politics to-day, but we are 
thinking of that narrow line of Americans in which all of us 
would love to stand, a line existing not to save France, but to 
help France save civilization. 

I never speak from the same platform with Professor Hart 
without feeling that it is hardly worth while to attempt to add 
anything to what he has said ; his mind is so virile ; he covers so 
many phases of life that it is impossible to find any unoccupied 
cranny into which you can creep after he has had a hearing. I 
must say that when the telephone message was sent to me about an 
hour ago with the suggestion that I attempt to impersonate 
James M. Beck, I felt overcome with the honor ; but evidently the 
idea was that it would take two university professors to fill 
the place of Mr. Beck. After the address which has just been 
delivered, however, I venture to assume that that was what might 
be called a false diagnosis. No one admires James M. Beck's 
wonderful eloquence more than I ; but I doubt if any man in this 
or any other country could roam over so wide a field in so brief 
a time, with more certain knowledge than the eloquent and bril- 
liant historian who has just spoken. I therefore rise with un- 
usual reluctance, although I always go to the platform as a man 
going to his own execution, sit down with the feeling that perhaps 
it would have been better so. 

A few years ago, one of my little girls came into my room 
and I said to her, "What are you going to do when you grow 
up?" "Well," she answered, "I think I shall be a professor; I 
can read books. I would like to be a carpenter, but I am not 



178 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

intelligent enough." Frankly, I feel that I am not intelligent 
enough to add anything to what Professor Hart has said, and 
I feel that I am not intelligent enough to face alone the enormous 
responsibility which hovers about the head of the one who at- 
tempts to direct the Educational Campaign of the National Se- 
curity League. That is a task which no man can accomplish. 
It is a task which no small body of men can accomplish. It 
is a task which can be accomplished only if our citizens, of 
whatever race, or color or creed, are willing to face the responsi- 
bility which belongs to-day, and has belonged for three long 
years, to every citizen of this free republic. Ours can never be 
a one man democracy — the old French proverb speaks for all 
democracies when it says : "There is some one wiser than Talley- 
rand, wiser than Napoleon. It is the whole world." 

One year ago I went to China, as the guest of the Chinese 
Government, charged with the enormous task of trying to set 
in motion educational processes which would in time interpret 
to the Chinese people the meaning of the magnificent institu- 
tions which we have inherited, without effort of our own, but 
which we can no longer expect to keep except by a real and 
vital struggle. For we must realize that by the irony of fate, 
or by the Providence of God, call it what you will, this coun- 
try which gave organized, representative government in its 
most developed form to all the nations, has got to settle the 
greatest issue that was ever presented to the world. We are con- 
fronting to-day the hosts of reaction, who, since the first moment 
when Prussia entered into the history of Europe, have dreamed 
dreams of conquest. You know the words of the Kaiser ? — "We 
Hohenzollerns take our crown from God alone ; on me the spirit 
of God has descended; who opposes me I shall crush. . . . He 
who listens to the voice of public opinion runs a danger of in- 
flicting immense harm on the State." That is Caesarism and 
Napoleonism and all the vile, miserable militarism which has 
dreamed dreams of world conquest for a thousand years, summed 
up in a single phrase. "From childhood," he said, on another oc- 
casion, "I have been under the influence of four men, Julius 
Caesar, Theodoric II, Frederick II, and Napoleon. Each of these 
men dreamed a dream of world empire, and they failed. I am 
dreaming a dream of German world empire, and my mailed fist 
shall succeed." 

You know the words which he used in addressing his troops 
in June, 191 5, "The triumph of the greater Germany, which some 
day must dominate all Europe, is the single end for which we are 
righting;" and if this descendant of the Hohenzollerns — the de- 
spicable Hohenzollerns, really speaks, as he claims to speak, as the 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 179 

Vicegerent of God on earth, he ought to speak the truth, and 
with clear knowledge. In a recent conversation with the Prime 
Minister of Japan, Count Okuma, I referred to the "Divine 
right" of the Kaiser, and one of those inscrutable looks came into 
his eyes. "We think here in Japan that the God who crowned 
the German Kaiser is what we call the Devil," he answered. 

Do we realize in this country — I realize it, facing it as I 
must — what it means that we have from one end of this nation 
to the other hundreds of thousands engaged in the process of 
propaganda? Propaganda means this, from the point of view of 
education. It means that, when the great crisis has come, the 
mind of your people has been found not to have had implanted 
in it the ideas which are necessary to sustain the duties of citi- 
zenship. It means that your educational system has failed. If 
your educational system had been a success, you would not need 
propaganda. 

I was six weeks in Germany at the beginning of this war, and 
the only propaganda which Germany needs to-day is the propa- 
ganda in America, in Russia, in China, and in those countries in 
which it is trying to get into the minds of the people who do not 
belong to it ideas which will unfit them for the service of the 
country to which they belong. Germany devised a system of edu- 
cation thirty years ago. She has solemnly and deliberately put 
into the minds of every German exactly the ideas which were 
necessary to sustain this unconquerable ambition when the hour 
of destiny should have struck. 

It is an interesting comment on humor, that Professor Las- 
son, in spite of these high rolling phrases to which the Kaiser is 
continually giving vent, spoke to his students in these words. "The 
more successful the Kaiser is, the more modest he is." The com- 
fort of that statement is this ; it means that the Kaiser has failed. 

But have we succeeded? Have we given free government 
the basis for complete success ? We begin to see that we have not. 
For a hundred years we have been conscious that free govern- 
ment can only rest on the basis of universal education, a sound 
primary education for all. We now realize that we have never 
had anything approaching universal education in the United 
States. Instead of universal education, we now begin to realize 
that we have local option. We have been teaching our children 
that we got rid of the doctrine of nullification when the rough 
voice of Andrew Jackson declared one section of the country 
should not set at defiance a law which was considered necessary 
for the whole of this country. We are now beginning to realize 
that nullification in this country is as really a fact to-day as it 
was in 1832 ; but it is not political nullification. It is educational 



180 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

nullification. I mean this : We say there are certain things which 
are absolutely necessary to the success not of any one State, but 
of the whole great Federal experiment, on the success of which 
I believe depends the rapid success of our form of government 
throughout the world. For the time is coming, probably within 
our lifetime, when the only form of monarchy left in the world 
will be the form of monarchy where the monarch is preserved 
in rose-water and served at pink teas. Every form of autocracy 
is going to pass; it is passing before our eyes. Autocracy has 
failed ; but we must not fail to realize that democracy is on trial, 
and the success of democracy requires two steps, and not one. 

You cannot make democracy safe by beating Germany. You 
may kill every German on God's earth ; you may bury the whole 
German Empire forty feet under ground ; and still you have to 
face the second step in your process, which is to show the world 
that free government can do everything that autocracy can do; 
that free government can be both honest and efficient. Instead 
of that, to-day we are resting, satisfied, in a period of nullifica- 
tion. Universal education is necessary to the success of our gov- 
ernment, and what do we say? We say to New York, "If you 
give universal education, we are pleased." We say to North 
Carolina, "If you do not give universal education, you are at 
liberty to refuse it." That is nullification, and it is the most 
insidious form of nullification, for it is nullification by negative 
and not by positive action. 

Every section of this country to-day is at liberty, by the 
organization which we call our system of education, to fail to 
gives to its citizens the education which is necessary, absolutely 
necessary, not to the success of that State or community, but to 
the success of the whole Federal experiment in this country. 

Do you realize that in this country there are thirty million 
people — and this is another phase of the question — thirty mil- 
lion people who were born in foreign countries, or whose father 
or mother was born in some foreign country ? Take New York to- 
day. In spite of the fact that we have had almost no immigration 
for three years, New York has 500,000 people who cannot read 
or write the English language. There are hundreds of schools 
in this country that teach the English language as an incidental 
subject, exactly as they teach Greek or Latin or other dead lan- 
guages. 

By the accident of geographical location, an abnormal propor- 
tion of this immigration settles in the City of New York, and we 
know that the assimilation of this foreign population is absolutely 
necessary, for if it is not assimilated, as Professor Hart remarked 
to me, it is clear that this nation is headed in the direction of a 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 181 

modern Austria-Hungary, an empire which some one has said 
is not an empire but a mistake. 

Allow that process of non-assimilation of the race groups 
in this country to continue for a few generations, and you have 
got an American which is not only polyglot, but which has not got 
into the minds of the people which make up its population the 
principles which make American citizenship. America: What: 
does it mean ? What is an American ? An American is only a per- 
son who has caught certain ideals and visions, who has certain 
definite ideas ; and if your system of education does not put those 
ideas into the minds of your people, how, in God's name, will you 
ever be able to face the crises in the future any more successfully 
than we have faced them in the past ? And there has not been a 
great crisis in the history of this country which we have not faced 
more by the grace of God than by the application of any fore- 
thought. 

Certain ideas are now found to be absolutely essential to the 
safety of this country in the hour of emergency. They demand 
propaganda. We must carry through this propaganda, no matter 
how much it costs. We must get into the minds of the people 
of this country those ideals which will enable us to act and to 
think as a nation and not as a collection of polyglot groups, with 
different ideals and aspirations; but if we do that, still we are 
face to face with the problem, how are we going to avoid in the 
future the errors of the past ? Professor Hart will agree with me, 
that history is of little value merely as a record of the past. 
History is valuable as a guide-book of the future, and if we do not 
profit by the errors and mistakes of the past, the pursuit of the 
historian is no better than the pursuit of the man who collects 
nonsense syllables or postage stamps. 

We have got to face the great reconstruction which is to follow 
the victory over Germany as surely as we are facing German 
bayonets to-day. Victory we must have; but military victory 
alone cannot make the world safe for democracy. Nothing can 
make the world safe for an ignorant and an inefficient democracy. 
We must have education. We must do away with the idea of 
nullification in education, so that anything which is necessary 
for the safety of the republican experiment shall clearly fall 
within the power of the Federal government. We must concen- 
trate to the extent of having somebody in this country whose 
business is to think of education, not in terms of science as the 
universities think, not in terms of village community or small 
districts as all of our educational commissions and all of our 
boards of education do to-day, but to think in terms of America, 
to think of the problems of the nation and of the nations ; for the 



182 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

age of international thinking is already upon us. We dare no 
longer think with provincial minds. 

President Wilson's most striking sentence increases in value 
as we understand that it is merely the reformulation of an idea 
which runs through our history like a thread of gold. 'The world 
must be made safe for democracy," represents a culmination. 
The American Revolution meant in essence that thirteen colonies 
must be kept safe for democracy and nothing more. 

We made those thirteen colonies safe for democracy ; and the 
oppressed of all nations since that time have rested in the pleasant 
shadow of that safety. Then, as the means of communication be- 
came more efficient, the continents drew together and we began 
to realize that to keep thirteen colonies or forty states safe for 
democracy, you must keep the whole continent safe for democ- 
racy; and then James Monroe, in 1823, issued the Monroe Doc- 
trine, declaring that the American continents must be kept safe 
for democracy ; and, by the mercy of God and the efficiency of the 
British fleet, we have kept these continents safe for democracy. 
And now, by the Yankee ingenuity which has made of the Atlantic 
and Pacific Oceans merely convenient highways of approach, we 
have begun to realize that two continents cannot be made safe 
for democracy unless every foot of the earth's surface is kept free 
from the menacing power of an ambitious autocracy ; and there- 
fore we have undertaken the final task of making all the world 
safe for democracy, which means also safe for all kinds of gov- 
ernment except that which lives by plunder. 

We are fighting to-day the battle of democracy, democracy 
expressed in terms, not of the individual man alone, but of the 
individual nation as well. 



THREE: BY DOCTOR SAVIC 

Of Serbia 

This fine spirit which has animated this great country 
of yours has encouraged me, and after these hours of 
tragedy through which my nation has passed, my spirit has 
again been raised and I should like so much that I could bring all 
my nation here to witness your nation, to see this great world 
struggle through, and to be convinced, as I am now, that you must 
be victorious, and with your victory that my country will be 
saved. I don't doubt it any more. 

But allow me only to draw your attention, after these splendid 
and these brilliant speeches of the present speakers, to some con- 
crete facts. 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 183 

Serbia is to-day invaded by German and Austrian and Bul- 
garian armies. She is invaded first because that nation was as 
determined in spirit as your nation to oppose the spread of Ger- 
man autocracy and stood in the way of German world dominance. 
But, more than that, my nation, and very unfortunately, is geo- 
graphically situated in a most dangerous corner and a most in- 
teresting corner in the world. It is a bridge connecting the west 
with the east, and the German main ambition, as you know now, is 
directed towards the east, and the Serbian nation and the Serbian 
resistance was to be broken and the Serbian nation to be wiped 
out, not to form any more an obstacle to German ambition. 

And Serbia fought for her own freedom and existence, and 
Serbia fought for the great principles of democracy and freedom 
that have been inscribed on your banners, and Serbia fought for 
the freedom and unity of her own race. It is a fact that besides 
Serbia and Montenegro which are inhabited by the Serbs, there 
are oppressed and enslaved in Austro-Hungary seven million of 
my race and of my people. Serbia was poor but was in process 
of being developed into a prosperous and satisfied democracy. 
Even by our principles of self-government, we have been an ob- 
stacle in the way of the German spirit and of the German rulers. 

We have been for a century an attraction to our kinsmen in 
Austria-Hungary, which is nothing else but a dependency of Ger- 
many. Serbia was to be finished once for all. She was ob- 
structing her way to the sunny shores of the Mediterranean and 
of the Adriatic Sea. 

But now I have no doubt that with your armies and with the 
armies of all our allies, we will be victorious on the battlefield; 
but I have really some doubt whether these splendid principles 
for which you are committed to war will be concretely material- 
ized by future peace in the world, and it is my deep conviction, 
as you could gather from the foregoing speeches, that there is no 
lasting peace in Europe and there will be no lasting peace, but 
only a German peace, in Europe and in the world if you will 
allow after this war, for a single day, Austria-Hungary to con- 
tinue as she has. 

We have these facts : If you will only look at the map that I 
brought with me, you will see that she is inhabited by parts only 
of different nations. In Austria-Hungary we have some twelve 
millions of Germans, some eight or nine millions of Slavs, five 
millions of Poles, four or five millions of Rumanians, ten mil- 
lions of Magyars, and seven millions of Slavs, Croats and Czechs ; 
and by the Germans and the Magyars who number twenty million, 
Germany was able by her statecraft to attach so completely 
Austria-Hungary to her car, and to conquer all these people in 



184 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Austria-Hungary, thirty million in number, that they fight to-day 
Germany's battles against their own will and against their own 
interests. 

The victory of Austria-Hungary means national and political 
death to those people that are now put against their will in the 
forefront of Germany's battles. You know that the Hungarians, 
Slavs, with many others, sympathize with the Allies and tried to 
revolt ; but the military efficiency of the Central Powers has been 
too prompt and too quick for any attempt at revolution. But 
these people did not stop at that. They have been sent to the 
Serbian front, to the Russian front — they have sent them there, 
they have formed the army corps which day after day are fight- 
ing on your side for the same principles for which this country 
is fighting, and they are fighting against Austria-Hungary which 
has been to them the stepmother Austria, that was only animated 
by a spirit of slavery, by abject subjugation and absolute sub- 
servience to German ambitions. 

And if we come to take literally the tasks as outlined by Lloyd 
George, and understand them literally, that they mean the dismem- 
berment of Austria-Hungary, it means that there will stand in the 
most dangerous corner of Central Europe the causes that have 
brought these great crises in the world, that these causes will be 
made permanent, and we are looking for a new crisis which will 
be, I fear, a better opportunity for Germany to realize to-morrow 
what she was unable to realize to-day. 

I ask you to put a question to yourselves, why twelve million 
Germans will remain in Austria-Hungary. Is there any external 
power to compel those Germans to live in Austria-Hungary? I 
think that your answer must be, No, there is no external power, 
as there is an external power to compel my people and the people 
of Rumania and the Czechs and the Poles to live in that empire 
where they find no protection and no justice; but the Germans, 
if they are to remain in Austria-Hungary, are to remain only to be 
able further to exploit the resources of that empire in the inter- 
ests of Germany. 

It will come, this reorganization of Austria-Hungary on a 
sham democracy. It is a worse thing than we know now. It will 
be a sort of autocracy in which there will be no spirit of freedom 
and no spirit of sincerity. After this war, if you leave all these 
broken nationalities in this empire, then the Germans will be able 
to say to my people, to the Rumanians, to all around them, 
"Look how you have failed in the fight in the company of these 
great democracies of the world. You have been broken; your 
country has been devastated; you have lost the youth of your 
nation ; come to me ; I am the leading nation ; recognize me ; I am 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 185 

ready to recognize you, to obtain the maximum of the 'output,' " 
as they express themselves, "and by serving me you will be spared 
and we shall be, of course, the rulers of the world, and you have 
only to accept my mastery and my leadership." 

And if the nations will not listen to that temptation, is there 
any one in this fine gathering of men that can hold that on a new 
occasion when Germany will again arm her forces to push to the 
east, that there will again offer in the world this great coalition 
of nations against the Germans? It would not be necessary for 
Germany to make a new war; it would be perhaps only enough 
for Germany to send the ultimatum, just such a shameful docu- 
ment as was sent to my country on the eve of this war, and I fear 
very much that there will be no nation that will have the destiny 
of Serbia before her eyes, to oppose the German power. It would 
be enough for Germany to bully all those around her and they will 
bow to her, and the spirit of slavery and the spirit of German 
autocracy will be predominant all over the world. And it can be 
only extirpated out of Europe and out of the whole world if you 
come to the only safe, to the only logical, assertion that has truth 
and sincerity in it — it is to dismember Austria-Hungary. That is 
the source of all political unrest and of all political trouble in 
Central Europe. 

When you will be true to yourselves, when you will be true 
to the great ideals of freedom and of democracy that are so 
inscribed on your banners, you will fight in Germany, you will 
give to the oppressed nationalities in Austria-Hungary com- 
plete freedom, complete independence, and then you will raise 
the finest monument to your nation. Instead of a down-trodden, 
instead of a subject empire, there will arise in Central Europe, as 
at the stroke of a magic hand, a free nation, beginning from free 
Poland that has fought to have its liberty, free Rumania, free 
Serbia, and that will be the best warrant to protect your liberty 
and the best monument for this bravery and for this great deter- 
mination with which you have entered into this great war. 

And if the other nations in Europe are saved, my nation is 
saved too. And if we have in this war placed all, we have saved 
only one thing; we have saved only our banners, our national 
honour ; and I appeal to you that you will create such conditions 
in Europe, especially in Southeastern Europe, that there will be 
complete justice, not only to my nation that has suffered as much 
and more than any other in this war, but justice to all the other 
nations to-day oppressed by Germany. And I hope that you will, 
finally, — it is your duty to do it and it is the best to accomplish and 
protect the interests of your nation. 



186 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 



FOUR: BY REVEREND J. PERCIVAL HUGET, D.D. 

What would Lincoln say to this generation ? 

Lincoln would be entitled to a hearing by virtue of the power 
of his mind and that singularly clear and penetrating wisdom 
and judgment which enabled him always to penetrate beneath the 
surface or the appearance of things, to the underlying issues and 
values, to strip away the artificial and the non-essential, and to 
arrive at the heart of every issue presented to him. 

Lincoln would be entitled to a hearing also because of his 
soul, the integrity of his manhood which has won him, more than 
aught else, even his martyrdom, his place of supremacy among the 
Americans of the nineteenth century. Lowell is altogether right 
in the mighty words of his Commemoration Ode, when he says : 

"He knew to bide his time, 

And can his fame abide, 

Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 

Till the wise years decide. 

Great captains, with their guns and drums, 

Disturb our judgment for the hour, 

But at last silence comes; 

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 

Our children shall behold his fame, 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 

New birth of our new soil, the first A merican." 

Lincoln would be entitled to a hearing also because he emerged 
under circumstances so great, and so compelling, as to make his 
thoughts and the utterance of his thoughts significant for his gen- 
eration, for his people, for the world. In order that I may say 
in rapid introduction, more rapidly and more accurately than I 
could in my own words, permit me again to quote the greatest of 
Lincoln poems, that of Edwin Markham : 

''When the Norn-Mother saw the whirlwind hour, 

Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, 

She bent the strenuous heavens and came down 

To make a man to meet the mortal need. 

She took the tried clay of the common road — 

Clay warm with the genial heat of earth, 

Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy; 

Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. 

It was a stuff to wear for centuries, 

A man that matched the mountains, and compelled 

The stars to look our way and honor us. 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 187 

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth; 

The tang and odor of the primal things — 

The rectitude and patience of the rocks, 

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; 

The courage of the bird that dares the sea; 

The justice of the rain that loves all leaves; 

The pity of the snow that hides all scars ; 

The loving-kindness of the wayside well; 

The tolerance and equity of light 

That gives as freely to the shrinking weed 

As to the great oak flaring to the wind — 

To the graves' low hill as to the Matterhorn, 

That shoulders out the sky. 

And so he came. 

From prairie cabin up to Capitol, 
One fair ideal led our chieftain on. 
Forever man, he burned to do his deed 
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king. 
He built the rail pile as he built the State, 
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow, 
The conscience of him testing every stroke 
To make his deed the measure of a man. 
So came the captain with the mighty heart; 
And when the step of earthquake shook the house, 
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient hold, 
He held the ridge-pole up and spiked again 
The rafters of the home. He held his place — 
Held the long purpose like a growing tree — 
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. 
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down 
As when a kingly cedar green with bows 
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills 
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky." 

Now, how shall any man in the compass of a few moments en- 
deavor to answer the question I have propounded, "What Would 
Lincoln Say to This Generation ?" It can be done best by a selec- 
tion of his own mighty words and by the adoption and application 
of those words to the crisis of our own hour. I call your attention 
rapidly to the fact that this man, who had less than six months 
of academic schooling, who, at the age of twenty, walked twenty 
miles to Springfield to borrow his first law books, that this man, so 
unlettered and unschooled, was able, after he emerged from ob- 
scurity to national prominence, within the space of eight or ten 
years, to deliver a large number of political addresses of such 
ability and such worth that they justly rank with the great utter- 
ances of our American life and at least half a dozen of them are 
comparable with all the utterances of the Presidents and states- 
men in the history of the nation ; at least, the Gettysburg Oration 
and the Second Inaugural Address have not been matched in 
public utterances since the days of the orations of Demosthenes, 



188 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

First of all, let me bring before you as typical, the address 
delivered before the Republican State Convention at Springfield, 
Illinois, in i860, at the time of the meeting of the newly organized 
party in that State. This address is commonly known as the 
"House-Divided-Against-Itself" speech because of the sentence 
which I quote. Lincoln was warned against the utterance of a 
certain phrase. They said, "It will mean political suicide." Have 
you ever noticed how many times he committed political suicide, 
how many times he was dead and buried, and how many times 
he came again to life and power? His reply was, "The time has 
come when these words need utterance. If their utterance by me 
means political death, I had rather go down to my grave with them 
uttered, than survive with them silent." And therefore he said, 
when slavery was the great issue before the American people, "A 
house divided against itself cannot stand." Take those words of 
sixty years ago and apply them to American public life to-day, 
and permit me to say to this distinguished Republican Club in 
this clearly great hour, that any man, whoever he may be, who 
seeks for personal advantage or political gain to himself, can 
set one element in our national life so against another element as 
to set city against city, class against class, is not only guilty of 
failure to meet a foe, but is also traitor to his land in its great 
and desperate hour of need. 

Let me tell you again of Lincoln's speech delivered in Clinton, 
Illinois, at which time Lincoln first came in controversy with 
Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln had come to Clinton at the time of 
a country fair, and if there are gentlemen here who, like myself, 
are familiar with the rural districts and county fairs in the fall 
of the year, you will know what sort of an occasion it was. Doug- 
las was speaking to a great crowd, and Lincoln came to the edge 
of the crowd. There were cries for Lincoln. He said, "My 
friends, this is Judge Douglas's speech. I have no right to inter- 
fere, but if you will meet me later on the east side of the Court 
House, I will make some remarks on the issue of the day." 

Lincoln said two things; as illustrating the type of political 
campaigning, he said, "I understand that this afternoon Judge 
Douglas, losing his temper a little possibly, or becoming nervous, 
said that he would be willing to engage in personal combat 
with me ; that he would like to thrash Lincoln. I understand that 
another, a partner of Douglas, even more nervous, took ofT his 
coat and said he would take the job off Douglas's hands. Did 
anybody hear him say that? I shall not fight Judge Douglas or 
his bottle-holder, for that might prove that I am more muscular 
than he, or he more muscular than I, and that is not the question 
before the American people." He went on to say, "I understand 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 189 

Judge Douglas to say that I am in favor of negro equality (in 
order to put Lincoln in a disadvantageous position). In a cer- 
tain sense, I am in favor of negro equality. In the right of the 
negro to eat the bread his own hands have earned, he is the equal 
of Judge Douglas or any other man." Those words are applicable 
to-day to all men, the world around, and we lift the question of 
patriotism into the realm of morality when we declare that no 
ruler, that no Reichstag, that no Congress, has the right to con- 
sider the multitude of toiling and suffering men, women and chil- 
dren of the world as subject to their whims alone. One of the 
things that needs to be burned in the hearts of the American 
people is the right of the common man to live in peace and live 
in the enjoyment of his own work, and enjoy the product of his 
own toil. In a wider realm, you come to what has just been 
argued for by the gentlemen who have just preceded me; the 
recognition of the right of self-determination of peoples, the 
right of every people, little or large, highly cultured or at a 
primitive stage of advancement, to find their own way into the 
light and into civilization, and to work out the destiny which 
God has appointed to them; and the instinct and heroism of 
every man who loves his fellows rises in answer to that affront. 

I call your attention to the Lincoln-Douglas debates which 
occurred in 1858, for one sentence. Douglas was a candidate 
for the United States Senate. A young man twenty years of age, 
he walked into Winchester, Illinois, with thirty cents sewed in his 
pocket, and within fifteen years he became an auctioneer, then 
school-teacher, then a practicing attorney, then Attorney-General 
of the State of Illinois, then Registrar of Deeds, appointed by the 
President Secretary of State, then Justice of the Supreme Court, 
then a member of the lower House of Congress, and then United 
States Senator, all in less than fifteen years. 

On a bronze tablet by the gateway of Knox College, are 
inscribed these words : 

"They are blowing out the moral light around us, who con- 
tend that whoever wants to own slaves has a right to do so," 

for the first time lifting the whole issue and program and out- 
come above the level of political expediency up to the level of 
morality. 

Abraham Lincoln was invited by a Young Men's Society in 
Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, to come to Brooklyn and deliver 
an address for which he was to receive $200. He had neg- 
lected his law practice, and $200 looked very good to Abra- 
ham Lincoln; but he said, "If you find you are not likely to 



190 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

sell tickets enough, let me know." He found it was to be held 
in Cooper Institute. When the hour came, that great audi- 
torium was filled with a mighty company that contained every 
man of prominence in the intellectual and political life of New 
York. He was escorted by Horace Greeley, Henry Ward 
Beecher, Joseph Choate and David Dudley Field, the Chairman 
of the meeting being the poet, William Cullen Bryant. 

He came an unheralded stranger, but he took that audience 
of culture in the hollow of his hands, and by the magic of the 
simplicity of human speech, won the hearts of those people. 
The prophet of that day said, 

"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith 
let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it." 

Four years ago and less, as the result of a long calculated 
and deliberately laid plan, there was flung into the world the 
insolent challenge that might makes right, and the nations of the 
world have responded with the answer: "It's a lie." 

I omit entirely the First Inaugural Address to which I should 
like to refer if time permitted, to go to the Gettysburg Oration. 
I have a personal friend, the last surviving member of the Gettys- 
burg Commission, who tells me that that oration very nearly 
was never delivered; but one day when the Committee met, 
one of them said, "Perhaps we have made a mistake in not in- 
cluding an invitation to President Lincoln. We ought to invite 
him." So the invitation was extended, and Lincoln said that 
he would accept. Then the Commission said, "Now, what shall 
we do with him? He is a ready debater; he is a rough and 
ready lawyer; but this is a solemn occasion, and we don't want 
to spoil it by any uncouthness." One of his friends undertook 
to guarantee him. 

After one address, a tall, lank fellow arose and came to the 
front of the platform. It was in November, 1863, that Lincoln 
delivered in a little more than two hundred and fifty words, 
twenty lines of ordinary print, the most matchless utterance in 
our speech, containing all the elements of a great oration. 

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth 
on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedi- 
cated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we 
are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or 
any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We 
are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to 
dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those 
who here gave their lives that that nation might live." 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 191 

You might talk for an hour and not get a situation any more 
clear than that. 

And now I come to the most dramatic episode in all public 
utterance. Lincoln had come to dedicate a few acres of ground. 
He saw the vices of his countrymen and saw beyond them the 
vices of all the nation and of all the people to come after them. 
The great commoner was a prophet of freedom. 

"It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

"But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot con- 
secrate — we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living 
and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above 
our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note 
nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget 
what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedi- 
cated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here 
have thus far so nobly advanced." 

I believe that at that hour Lincoln was speaking, not only for 
himself, not only for the cause of liberty then, but for the down- 
trodden of all time ; speaking, as I verily believe, for all the gen- 
erations of all nations through the ages ; dedicating himself to 
the cause of liberty; and at that hour he made it impossible 
for the American people permanently to stay out of this war. 
I almost think I ought to stop at that point ; but because of 
your very ready response, I shall not. I must not forget that 
we have not yet reached the culmination even of that short 
address. The distinguished historian said it, the gentleman at 
my left said it, the gentleman at my right said it, all in different 
words, what Lincoln said, and what I say again, when he went 
on to say, 

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task 
remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last 
full measure of devotion." 

Think of the five millions of men in their graves, and other 
millions of men, women and children who have died and whose 
bones bleach beneath the skies, who have suffered all manner of 
torture, and, speaking in the same words as Lincoln used, let us 
"here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died 
in vain"; it is not for you or for me or for men who sit 
around any council table to make any peace that forgets the men 
who have given their lives. 

And there is a third thing in that speech, which I must point 



192 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

out to you. I never saw it until six months ago. Lincoln was 
not speaking merely of the maintenance of democratic insti- 
tutions in America, for, by a strange providential circumstance, 
he used a different word. 

Let us highly resolve "that this nation, under God, shall have 
a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, 
by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 

Not merely from America. God kept this great land secret 
for the centuries, that mighty Mississippi Valley from which I 
came, until less than a century ago, untouched, uninhabited. For 
what cause? That in such an hour as this there might be men 
into whose hearts had come the mighty vision to meet the great 
assault, and to make it true that the common man should not go 
down in sorrow, in tears and in suffering; but that they who 
do the work of the world, who bear the burdens of the world, 
who, after all, are humanity, shall not be the property of kings 
or the playthings of men of power. 

I come, for speed, to the last; but before I close, I want 
to ask your indulgence for another local, immediate touch. It 
is rather interesting how a man can sometimes come in from 
outside and tell people who have lived in a city all their lives 
of something about it that they may not have known. How many 
of you knew Edmund Clarence Stedman, the banker poet of New 
York? When Lincoln was in the White House, in the dark 
hours of the Civil War, he came one day to his Cabinet meeting 
laughing, reading one of the books of Artemus Ward. Stanton 
and Chase looked rather surprised that Lincoln could laugh at 
such a time as that. He took the occasion to read to them a 
poem written by Edmund Clarence Stedman, which I quote : 

Back from the trebly crimsoned field 
Terrible words are thunder-tost; 
Full of the wrath that will not yield, 
Full of revenge for battles lost! 
Hark to their echo as it crost 
The Capital, making faces wan, 
Went this murderous holocaust : 
Abraham Lincoln, give us a man! 

Give us a man of God's own mould, 
Born to marshal his fellow men; 
One whose fame is not bought and sold 
At the stroke of a politician's pen; 
Give us the man of thousands ten, 
Fit to do as well as to plan ; 
Give us a rallying cry and then 
Abraham Lincoln, give us a man! 



GERMANY'S CENTRAL EUROPE POLICY 193 

No leader to shirk the boasting foe 

And to march and counter-march our brave, 

Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low 

And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave, 

Nor another, whose fatal banners wave 

Aye in disaster's shameful van; 

Nor another to bluster and lie and rave; 

Abraham Lincoln, give us a man! 

Is there never one in all the land, 
One on whose might the cause may lean; 
Are all the common ones so grand 
And all the titled ones so mean? 
What if your failure may have been 
In trying to make good bread from bran, 
From worthless metal a weapon keen; 
Abraham Lincoln, give us a man! 

Oh, we will follow him, court death, 
Where the foeman's fiercest columns are; 
Oh, we will use our latest breath, 
Peering for every sacred star ! 
His to marshal us high and far, 
Ours to battle as patriots can, 
When a hero leads the Holy War; 
Abraham Lincoln, give us a man! 

New Yorkers, don't forget, when sometimes you question 
the loyalty and patriotism of the Middle West, that when Lin- 
coln found the man, though he sleeps in his splendid grave on 
Riverside Drive, nevertheless he came from Ohio. 

I must here introduce two words, in which, before the last 
part of the second inaugural, Lincoln says that both North and 
South prayed to the same God, and that the prayers of both 
could not be answered. I am a preacher of religion. I measure 
my words. I speak, I hope, without hatred or bitterness. I utter 
what I believe to be a solemn truth when I say that the God of 
the Emperor William is not the God of the American people, and 
we do not pray to him. The kind of a deity who he believes is 
the unfaltering and unwavering ally of murder, piracy, lust and 
greed, is no God of mine. 

But, after that, he went on to say : 

"Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty 
scourage of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it 
continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondman's two hun- 
dred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another 
drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so 
still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and 
righteous altogether.' " 



194 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firm- 
ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right; let us strive 
on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; 
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his 
widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish 
a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

May I close with the words of James S. Mackey? 

"And so they buried Lincoln? Strange and vain! 

Has any creature thought of Lincoln hid 

In any vault, 'neath any coffin lid, 

In all the years since that wild spring of pain? 

'Tis false — he never in the grave was lain. 

You could not bury him although you slid 

Upon his clay the Cheops pyramid 

Or heaped it with the Rocky Mountain chain. 

They slew themselves ; they but set Lincoln free : 

In all the world his great heart beats as strong, 

Shall beat while pulses throb to chivalry 

And burn with hate of tyranny and wrong. 

Whoever will may find him anywhere 

Save in the grave ! Not there ! He is not there !" 



SIXTH DISCUSSION 

FEBRUARY NINTH, I918 
THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 



ONE: HONORABLE FREDERICK C. HICKS 

Member of Congress 

For a great many years I have had the pleasure of sitting 
there in the rear, listening to the discussions on these Saturday 
afternoons. I little thought then that I was in line for promo- 
tion from the gallery to the stage ; but I appreciate sincerely the 
courtesy of being asked to come here to-day to speak to my fel- 
low-members of this Club. It is very pleasing to me to be asked 
to speak on the subject which has been mentioned as the topic 
to-day, the question of morals. It is a very gratifying thing to 
a politician at any time in his career to talk about morals; but 
I am considerably puzzled to know where I am going to come 
in, for the simple reason that my friend on my left told me pri- 
vately that if it was going to be anything in favor of morals 
he wanted to speak on it, and if it was going to be anything on 
the other side, my friend on my right, Mr. Biddle, will speak 
for me ! 

It so happens that I am a member of the Naval Committee 
of Congress and we are spending day after day in going over 
items in the great Appropriation Bill now before us, which car- 
ries over one billion dollars, the largest naval bill in the history 
of this country. When I speak on the Navy I must apologize to 
you in advance, as I can't be as specific as I would like because of 
public policy, and I will ask you to bear with me if I omit some 
figures or dates here and there. I want to say to you that the 
Navy of the United States to-day is prepared to do what the 
Navy of the United States has always done. There are in 
foreign waters at this moment a number of the capital ships of 
our Navy as well as a large fleet of destroyers, yachts and small 
vessels used in patrol work, the first of which reached the other 
side on May 4th last, all manned, armed and equipped by the 
American Navy. We have placed many hundreds of gunners 
on our own armed merchant ships, supplying both the crews and 
the guns. We have furnished many guns for use of the 
mercantile service of our allies and are ready to send to the bat- 
tle fronts from our great gun factories many pieces of ordnance, 

197 



198 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

not small guns, but large guns, guns that will answer the chal- 
lenge that has been sent out from Berlin. 

The personnel of the Navy has expanded three hundred per 
cent, since this war began, and to-day, roughly speaking, repre- 
sents three hundred thousand men in the service. The training 
facilities of our Navy have increased from six thousand men a 
year ago to one hundred and thirteen thousand, and there are 
in training now about ninety-five thousand men. 

The building program of destroyers, submarine chasers 
and other small craft has been tremendously augmented. De- 
spite the former pacifist views of Air. Henry Ford, he is to-day 
performing a great work in advancing the fighting forces of the 
nation, by constructing a large number of chasers of the most 
improved type. These vessels will be fabricated and launched in 
Detroit, and then brought through the canals to the seaboard. It 
would hearten your spirits could I tell you all the Navy is do- 
ing. Rest assured that the Navy of the United States, imbued 
with the courage and determination that has come to it from an 
heroic past, stands ready to maintain America's honor and 
America's purposes. Despite submarines and mines, despite raid- 
ers and aeroplanes, those ships, whether they are lying in readi- 
ness for an offensive move or whether they are convoying a 
fleet, wherever they may be on the surging seas, the Allied Na- 
vies of the world are still the masters of the wave. 

I am going to speak now, of some of the things that I saw on 
the battlefront, having been one of that party of ten Congress- 
men who, three months ago, went abroad. We spent several 
weeks going from one end of the line to the other, traveling six 
hundred miles along the Western Front. I am going to make 
this a running narrative, because, after Doctor Williams has 
spoken so eloquently of the great questions at stake, it would be 
out of place for me to endeavor to discuss the issues. I am go- 
ing to pass over the trip from New York to Liverpool, except 
merely to say that in going out from Sandy Hook we realized 
at once that we were in war. No running lights on the ship, no 
side lights, port holes battened down at night from the outside, 
and no one even allowed to smoke on deck, for fear that a 
lighted match would disclose the location of the vessel. Day 
after day we plowed eastward, the only break in our daily pro- 
gram being the few hours spent each day in drills and gun 
practice, when the ship maneuvered round a target while our 
gun crews practiced shooting. Two days before we reached the 
Mersey we were met by two destroyers which convoyed us into 
port. At Liverpool we saw ship after ship unloading their human 
freight of American soldiers and it was inspiring to see our boys 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 199 

in uniform following the old flag three thousand miles away from 
home. 

From Liverpool we went to London, where we were met by 
Ambassador Page and Mr. Ian Malcolm of the British Foreign 
Office. The next day we were informally received at the Ameri- 
can Embassy by Mr. Page and attaches. It is both a duty and a 
pleasure to pay a well merited tribute to our representative in 
London and his staff. The United States has never sent to Great 
Britain a more popular or more able ambassador than Mr. 
Page, and the work he is doing and has done reflects the greatest 
credit upon our country and is deserving of the highest praise. 

London to-day is different from the London of peace times. 
We saw in the city and nearby towns, buildings partly com- 
pleted and temporarily abandoned, for practically all construc- 
tion work not incident to the war was stopped at the out- 
break of hostilities. You see on the face of every one you meet 
that stern, set expression which means undying determination 
to win the war. There are soldiers marching up and down 
the streets, some wounded, others on leave of absence, and still 
others who are on their way to the front. At night almost total 
darkness prevails, just a faint glimmer in the streets, for only 
one out of three lamps is lighted, and these have great reflectors 
to prevent any glare shining upward. 'No shop windows are 
allowed to have their shutters open at night, and in the hotels 
the blinds are all tightly closed. It is a severe offense to open 
them when a light is burning. We had an interesting experience 
in an attempted raid, and, while we were not bombed, we had 
all of the sensations. We were at a conference when sud- 
denly we heard the cry "Take to shelter," "Take to shelter," as 
the Boy Scouts, who are in charge of this duty, ran through the 
streets warning the people. The authorities knew of the ap- 
proach of these raiders, because when the airships fly over the 
channel, the moment they are spotted on their approaching land, 
it is telegraphed to London, and the officers have an hour's lee- 
way in preparing for defense. When we started for our hotel 
the streets were almost deserted, the only sound being the 
scurrying of feet and the cry of these boys. The few people re- 
maining were hurrying in every direction to shelter. All through 
the streets signs are posted with a directing finger to indicate 
"Safety zones," "Fifty can be accommodated in this cellar," 
"Seventy-five can find shelter here." Stations in the tube, cel- 
lars, underground passages, every refuge that will afford pro- 
tection, is utilized. I can assure you we did not waste much time 
going to our hotel. We finally reached our destination with the 
night air still resounding with the cry "Take to shelter." How- 



200 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

ever, there was no raid that night, for the aeroplanes had been 
checked by anti-aircraft guns some distance from London, and 
so we missed the experience of having bombs dropped upon us. 

In food supplies England is feeling the effect of the submarine 
sinkings, and there is a shortage of some of the staples, especially 
flour and sugar. The portions placed before one in the res- 
taurants, though sufficient, are small, and strict limits are placed 
upon the quantities served. At breakfast, for instance, two 
pieces of brown war bread was the allowance, and two small 
lumps of sugar — lumps no larger than raisins — and if one or- 
dered oatmeal the little pieces might be exchanged for the same 
amount of brown granulated sugar, and then one would have to 
drink one's coffee without being sweetened. 

I want to speak for a moment of some of the great hospitals 
in London and especially the orthopedic hospitals, where they 
rebuild the human wreckage of war. It was one of the most 
depressing as well as one of the most encouraging sights I 
saw abroad. It was really marvelous to see the way in which 
surgeons at these institutions salvage the men who are sent 
there, and it means much for the economic future of the na- 
tion. Some men come in without arms, some without legs, some 
are blind, others are so shattered in their heads or bodies that it 
seems impossible to do anything to remedy their pitiful con- 
dition. I have seen men with parts of the jaw fractured, others 
with nose and cheeks lacerated by a piece of shell. In restoring 
face wounds where the bone has been cut away, they take a 
piece of a rib of the wounded man to replace the loss, carefully 
fitting the new part into the cavity. Or, if this be impracticable, 
they take the rib from a brother or sister or some other near 
blood relative. I saw one of these men after he had been treated 
for several months. They showed us a picture of him taken the 
day he was received at the hospital. The change was almost un- 
believable — his nose, cheek and one-half of his jaw had been 
blown away. When I saw him several months after the initial 
treatment, while there was still a frightful scar, he was able 
to use his jaw almost as well as you or I. He could speak, he 
could eat, and all without pain. One man who had lost a leg at 
the thigh and the other at the knee was so reconstructed by the 
use of artificial limbs that for several moments after I saw him 
I was not aware he was not using his natural legs. Another 
man had lost an arm at the shoulder and had an artificial one, 
which was so adjusted with contrivances and pulleys, that he 
could use it with almost the same power and dexterity as 
formerly. He was able to write, ride a bicycle, use a typewriter, 
row a boat, dig with a spade, and even shave himself. I saw him 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 201 

lift, at arm's length, with the artificial limb, a fifty-pound sledge 
hammer, and what was probably more startling was to see him 
take his pouch of tobacco from one pocket, which he held in 
one hand with his pipe, and then with the contrivance on the 
artificial hand, take a pinch of tobacco and pack it into his pipe. 
Many soldiers suffer from shell shock, due to the terrific bom- 
bardment to which they have been subjected. They may be 
physically sound and in perfect health except for dislocated 
nerves. Some are unable to walk; others cannot use their arms 
or hands. For hours, volunteer nurses sit beside these men, 
searching with electric vibrators for a nerve which yet has life. 
Perhaps at first the dormant nerve will respond by only an al- 
most imperceptible quiver but by constant treatment, day after 
day, it will be restored to its normal condition. Then another 
nerve is treated, until finally the man can again walk or use 
his hands. 

Great Britain cares for her blinded sailors and soldiers at St. 
Dunstans Hospital, where 350 of these unfortunates are 
quartered. The hospital is situated on the estate of Mr. Otto 
Kahn, of New York, who contributes the use of his property to 
this splendid work. Sir Arthur Pearson, himself blind, is the 
financial sponser to the institution. The men are taught useful oc- 
cupations and everything is done to prevent the blinded soldiers 
from falling into the slough of despond, which usually engulfs a 
man who has suddenly lost the sense of sight. Instead of this, his 
fighting spirit is aroused as he learns of the full and wonderful 
lives of usefulness achieved by others, and he realizes that closed 
eyelids do not mean lack of vision. He is inspired with the motto 
"What others can make of life I can also make." Gainful trades 
are taught, which will enable these sightless men to take their 
places in the economic world. Shorthand writing, telephone 
operating, shoe repairing, mat and basket-making, joinery, 
gardening, poultry raising, and massage are the occupations in 
which these blind veterans find their opportunities to become fac- 
tors in the industrial life of the nation. Many volunteer workers 
give their time and patience to this noble work. The men are 
taught to read and write by the Braille system, and a short ad- 
dress I made to some of the workers was handed me as it had 
been taken down by the blind typist in this code of the sight- 
less. The days are divided into class and lecture room exercises, 
shopwork, and recreation. In many of the workrooms the men 
were singing as their nimble fingers plaited the baskets and mats, 
and everywhere there was an absence of that depression and 
helplessness which is so often associated with a life of blindness. 

In the shops, although there are sighted foreman in each de- 



202 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

partment, the instruction is mainly given by men who are them- 
selves blind. The mere intelligent and apt soldiers are kept to 
be pupil teachers, in order to encourage the newcomer by the 
fact that he is profiting by the knowledge of a man, who was 
himself blinded on the battle field only a short time before. 

The amount of ingenuity that has been put into this salvaging 
of human beings is one of the marvels of the war. The science 
of medicine and surgery under the spur of necessity has made 
rapid strides in the past three years, and the knowledge and ex- 
perience acquired will be one of the compensations for the sacri- 
fices made. When the true history of this war is written in the 
perspective of future years it will tell of the movement of ships 
and of armies, of victories on land and sea, of heroism in the 
air and in the depths. It will speak also of that great human side 
of the conflict — the silent, prayerful sorrows of devoted mothers, 
wives and daughters. It will tell of the men of genius and 
women of patience who gave every ounce of their strength and 
the full measure of their skill to the task of restoring human 
beings, of rebuilding the bodies and the minds of men seemingly 
hopelessly injured, and implanting in their shattered frames 
hope and confidence to fight life's battles anew. 

On our first Sunday in England a very gracious compliment 
was paid us. Under the escort of Mr. Ian Malcolm, M. P., we 
were conducted through Windsor Castle, the great halls of this 
ancient fortress being opened as a special favor. We were first 
taken to St. George's Chapel, the meeting place of the Knights of 
the Garter, where we were honored by being seated in the stalls 
occupied by the Knights when in attendance. At the close of 
the services, the great organ in deep, dulcet tones, pealed out 
the "Star Spangled Banner," the first time in history that the 
American national anthem had echoed in this stately church. 

The day previous to our departure for the Continent was a 
memorable one, for we had the opportunity of hearing Lloyd 
George deliver in the House of Commons one of his master- 
pieces of oratory. This great commoner, every fiber of whose 
being responds to the call of democracy — alert, resourceful, cour- 
ageous and determined — delivered that day, on behalf of the 
sailors and soldiers of Great Britain, one of the finest, most 
inspiring eulogies that I have ever listened to. We lunched that 
day with many of the leaders of Parliament, and to my oft-re- 
peated query, "What can America do to bring this war to a 
speedy termination?" I invariably received the answer, "Build 
ships, airplanes and guns." Transportation is undoubtedly the 
greatest factor in the struggle. On it depends not only the send- 
ing of soldiers but the shipment of supplies to maintain them. 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 203 

Transportation is vital also for the support of our allies. Both 
airships and artillery are almost as essential to the success of 
our cause as ocean tonnage. As Sir Charles Beresford, re- 
tired admiral of the British fleet, said, "We want guns, guns, and 
then more guns." Mr. Lloyd George was equally emphatic about 
the need of ships, aircraft and artillery. He said, "Do not over- 
look the supreme importance of a large number of guns of all 
sizes, especially the three-inch caliber and larger." 

Paris to-day presents almost the same appearance that it did 
before the war. It is true that the streets are full of soldiers, 
and that women and old men have to a very large degree taken 
the places of men in the stores, but the streets at night are as 
brilliantly lighted as formerly, the restaurants and theaters are 
open, the shops offer their usual display of attractions and busi- 
ness goes on in much the same way as it did in pre-war days. 
Underlying it all there is that ever-present nervous strain and 
the faces of the men and women show the tension under which 
they are living. They are economizing too and husbanding their 
resources, as France, for three and a half years, has borne the 
brunt of the conflict. Think for a moment of her burden ; think, 
too, of the rekindled heroism of her people that carried forward 
her soldiers under the most terrible blows of war ever known. 
One and a half million of her sons dead, one and a half million 
more either prisoners or so injured as to be of no further mili- 
tary service; thousands of her women and children victims of 
the savagery of war; scores of her cities and towns shape- 
less ruins; hundreds of acres of her rich soil desolate wastes; 
her churches desecrated, her homes destroyed; and yet the 
spirit of France rises supreme to the horrors, the losses and the 
sacrifices that she has made and will continue to make. The 
heroic nation, bleeding and maimed, yet stands steadfast between 
Prussia and her ambition to rule the world. It is the soul of 
France that speaks through the tears and gloom, giving a 
promise, like the rainbow in the heavens, that democracy is safe 
in her keeping. 

The first real battle front we saw was at Soissons, where 
there was a terrific bombardment last summer. It was here 
at Chemin des Dames, "the road of the ladies," a long, low, 
nearly level ridge, that the French, in seven days' fighting, ex- 
pended $100,000,000 worth of ammunition. As we approached the 
line the highways became choked with the moving mass of men, 
guns and trucks. There was no shouting or singing by these silent, 
grim, determined soldiers. No bands played, no colors waved, 
no sound save the thud of marching feet and the clank of moving 
wagons. The men appeared well fed and clothed, and the horses 



204 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

were in superb condition. We found this true along the whole 
battle front and especially among the British troops. There is 
something inspiring about great masses of men; something that 
stirs one's blood at the thought of the power of a mighty army. 
All the way from Paris we had met and overtaken large num- 
bers of auto-trucks, called "lorries," which go back and forth 
carrying ammunition and supplies. We passed thousands of 
British and French troops on their way to Italy to reinforce the 
Italians after their reverse. As we approached Soissons we ob- 
tained our first view of airplanes operating in the war zone. 
Soaring above the rolling country, like great eagles, these daring 
birdmen — the cavalry of the air — whose fields of battle are the 
clouds, darted hither and yon across the line, scouting for the 
enemy. For miles here and on our way to Rheims we passed 
along camouflaged roads, protected from aircraft observation by 
great screens of woven grasses and artificial hedges. 

As we neared Rheims I happened to see several dark puffs 
of smoke smudge the leaden sky over the lines. Colonel Parker, 
who was with us, said that they were shells from anti-aircraft 
guns. While we were looking, one of the shells struck home, for 
the great black enevelope of a French balloon silhouetted itself 
against the clouds. Like a handkerchief cast to the winds, the 
torn bag flattened itself out, and in fantastic curves slowly 
sank to the earth, a mass of flames. Late in the afternoon, when 
the lengthening shadows of a gray November twilight were cast- 
ing their somber hues upon the battered and broken walls, we 
entered Rheims — ill-fated, battle-scarred Rheims — the center of 
an ancient civilization and for ages the sought- for prize of mili- 
tary aggression. What memories and associations of the past; 
what pathos and sorrows of the present are awakened by that 
name ! History, religion, art, romance, and chivalry — the epitome 
of human endeavors and aspirations — crowd the centuries of her 
existence. Rheims to-day is a melancholy ruin, a city of the 
dead, abandoned and closed to the outside world. Houses de- 
molished, streets torn up and filled with debris, crumbled walls 
and battered pavements, tell the story of the bombardment of 
Rheims. 

Surmounting all, a pathetic monument to the wreckage and 
frightfulness of war, stands the shattered cathedral. For eight 
hundred years this masterpiece of architectural splendor has 
been the shrine of countless thousands. But yesterday the pride 
of France, to-day a bleak and broken relic of its former glory. 
Birds wing their passage through the empty windows, once stud- 
ded by the noblest product of the glazier's art; gothic arches 
and chiseled columns, rich with the tracings of a master hand, lie 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 205 

as heaps of dirt upon the pavement, mixed with bits of glass 
and fragments of holy figures. A pile of debris now defiles the 
altar where stood Joan of Arc when her king was crowned. 
Ah, the pity, the pathos, and the wantonness of it all ! 

Cardinal Lucon, gray-haired and benign, to whose care the 
sacred edifice and its service have long been intrusted, ex- 
tended to us a sad welcome. In the gathering gloom of his ruined 
church, this patriotic and devoted prelate who has remained 
steadfast at his post, came forward to meet us. He grasped the 
hand of each, and in a few simple words expressed gratification 
at America's entrance into the war, "For," he said, "it will mean 
the restoration of my devasted country." A total of three hun- 
dred and five shells have struck the edifice since the beginning 
of the war, sixty-four of which were fired within the last 
few months, and the ancient church is yet a target for the 
artillery, each shell taking its toll of carved statue and molded 
arch. 

During its early bombardment, the cathedral was used as 
a hospital, Red Cross flags flying from its spire. But this did 
not save it from destruction, despite the fact that it was filled 
with wounded German soldiers. A scaffolding which had been 
erected for repair work was fired by an exploding shell and the 
flames spread to the woodwork above the main entrance. Soon 
the interior became a raging furnace, which threatened to in- 
cinerate the helpless men within. The old cardinal and a young 
priest began the work of rescue. By this time a great crowd 
had gathered outside. Suddenly one of those strange and un- 
accountable phases of mob fury seized the throng made frantic 
by suffering, the killing of relatives and friends, and infuriated 
at the sight of their beloved church in flames. The mob rushed to 
the entrance, demanding that the German soldiers lying on their 
cots be compelled to die in the hell created by their comrades in 
arms. It is related how the aged cardinal stepped forward and 
confronted the angry crowd. Placing himself between the mob 
and its intended victims, with hands outstretched in appeal, he 
said to them, "Very well, my children; but you must kill me 
first." Silence and shame fall upon the frenzied crowd; mad- 
ness gave place to reason, revenge to sympathy. With a mighty 
impulse, as their hearts were moved to pity, by the benevolence 
of the cardinal's act, they sprang forward vying with one an- 
other in their efforts to rescue their hated enemies in distress. 
As we lingered in the presence of these doleful scenes, the only 
sound that broke the stillness of the deserted streets was the deep 
intonation of distant guns, booming on the battle front. That, 
and the echo of one's footfall on the stones and the throbbing of 



206 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

one's own heart-beats as the terrible sacrifices and the suffering 
of it, all struck home. 

Passing through the country around Soissons and Rheims, we 
noted the seeming indifference of the inhabitants to all personal 
danger. Old men and women were working their farms close 
up to the firing line. Occasionally a shell would burst overhead, 
but they kept right on at their work, oblivious to all danger, so 
accustomed have they become to the artillery. On our way to 
Verdun we passed acre after acre of vineyards which have made 
this part of France famous for its wines. For miles before reach- 
ing the historic fortress of Verdun, we saw grim evidences of the 
titanic struggle. Houses destroyed — they are always the object 
of attack — bridges wrecked, trees felled, and everywhere soldiers, 
supply trains, and motor kitchens. The very air was laden with 
depression — a silence of dejection reigned over all as if the spirits 
of those in the ranks were stilled by the memory of those who 
had made the supreme sacrifice. 

One of the peculiar sensations of the battle front is the feel- 
ing of loneliness. Back of the lines one sees soldiers by the 
thousands, but close to the firing line one sees or hears none. 
Except for the roaring of the guns and the whining of the shells, 
one might imagine one's self in a desert land. When standing 
on the hills at Verdun, knowing that there were thousands of 
soldiers near by, we saw not one of that vast army. The 
men were concealed in dugouts, trenches and underground gal- 
leries. Without the blare of trumpets or the waving of ban- 
ners, they silently awaited the command to "Carry on !" This 
war is devoid of all the glamour, glitter and romance — yes, of 
all the chivalry, too — which in the past has been associated with 
great military movements. No flags float above the clouds of 
smoke and mist, inspiring men's hearts with love of country; 
no martial music stirs their drooping spirits; no strains of na- 
tional anthems thrill their souls and steel their courage for the 
coming charge. Everywhere it was the same. Once only in that 
long journey along the line, did I hear music, and then it was a 
single fife and drum corps marching with its company to a re- 
serve camp, miles behind the trenches. 

We reached Verdun at noon and dined with the commanding 
general in a vaulted mess hall, deep in the recesses of this ancient 
fortress. Miles upon miles of galleries have been constructed 
in the fort, forty and even sixty feet below the surface. As we 
ate our war lunch the plates and glasses on the table trembled 
when the French guns answered the German artillery, for the 
bombardment still goes on. Verdun stands at the apex of a great 
triangle where the hills crowd down to a narrow pass. It is like 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 207 

the prow of a great snow plow, and here the French, hundreds 
of years ago, built this great fortification to guard their eastern 
frontier. Verdun, the rock of destiny, against whose slopes were 
hurled the mightiest assaults in the history of man! Verdun, 
whose hills burst asunder beneath the shock of the heaviest can- 
nonading that the world has known ! Think often of this heroic 
spot, for it was here that civilization paused before that impact, 
then tottered and fell as the Prussian hosts swept onward; then 
rose again as the dauntless soldiers of France responded to that 
watchword of liberty, "They shall not pass !" and rolled back again 
and yet again the onslaught of the Huns. For ages that name will 
be the brightest page in the history of France, and you, as long 
as you live, will know of the glories ot Verdun. 

The great battle of a year ago took place on the hills which 
encompass the city. We went out to Fort Souville, five miles 
from the citadel. The hill on which it stands has been blasted 
almost to its base. Everywhere are trenches, wire entanglements, 
camp equipment, broken gun carriages, shells, guns, hand gre- 
nades and pieces of shell. Here is the most stupendous, the 
most terrible example of the waste and destruction of war 
imaginable. I have seen the ruins of Port Arthur in Man- 
churia, and have been to the top of 303 Meter Hill, where the 
Russians and Japanese fought for supremacy; but what I saw 
at Verdun was ten times more awful than the ruins of Port 
Arthur. The whole hill has literally been blown to pieces and is 
a desolation of shell holes and craters, filled with cartridges, un- 
exploded bombs and pieces of rifles. The ghastly wastage is ap- 
palling. When the Germans made that terrible attack they swept 
on over these hills and came up the crests, line after line, like 
waves of the sea. Where once a forest had stood, now noth- 
ing but blackened stumps remain. Fifty yards from where we 
were on the summit, was a shattered tree trunk, torn and blasted, 
which marks the highwater mark of the German advance. One 
remarkable occurrence of that onrush was related to us. The in- 
fantry attack had been preceded by a heavy artillery fire, which 
buried in the ground a French machine gun and its crew, over 
which swept the first line of Germans. These Frenchmen dug 
themselves out of the debris, set up their machine gun, and be- 
gan firing at the Germans from the rear. Caught between two 
lines of fire, the advancing Germans, not knowing the strength 
of the attack, became panic-stricken and fell backward. The 
few who managed to escape were glad to seek refuge behind their 
own lines. All of the men behind this machine gun were killed, 
but they saved the day for France. Eight hundred thousand 
men laid down their lives at Verdun — five hundred thousand 



£08 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Germans and three hundred thousand Frenchmen. We saw 
cemeto titaining thirty-five thousand graves. 1 asked where 

the res: were buried and the commander replied. "Here they 
lie beneath your very tee:, ground back into the elements." Five 
men were killed tor every nine square feet of earth on this 
bloodsoaked lull! The battle held extended over about three 
and a half square miles: every hill and every valley tells its 
story of tragedy and death. At the present time the firing line 
is several miles distant, but the French artillery all around us 
were tiring at the German trenches and the German guns would 
respond. Every few minutes we heard the sharp report of a 
Boche gun as a shell was hurled toward us. There was a con- 
stant roar of artillery, our conversation at times being inter- 
rupted by the din. No greater glory will ever come to France 
than the victory of Verdun : no greater honor will ever come to 
a Frenchman than for him to be able to say, "I. too. fought at 
Verdun." To-day with all its devastation and ruin, with all 
the sacrifices of life, with all the sorrow it represents. Verdun 
stands forth as the greatest monument to courage, bravery and 
determination, of which the world knows. Let us hope, too. that 
i: is the sepulcher for the hopes and ambitions of Prussian mili- 
tary autocracy. 

Now I am going to take you for a moment to the American 
Headquarters, back of the lines, where we were received by 
General Pershing: and his staff. Let me say of General Persh- 
ing, that in my opinion, he is a man not only of courage, experi- 
ence and ability, but that he is also an officer possessing the quali- 
fications to lead our troops to victory. We were taken through 
the headquarters, where Major Robert Bacon, by the way, is in 
charge. I ng was shown us ; their plans for future cam- 

paigns ; their means of obtaining information ; their method of 
transportation ; — every detail was laid before us. We then went 
out to where the soldiers themselves were quartered. I talked to 
the men, ate with them and mingled with them. In some cases 
the equipment was not as complete as it should have been, per- 
haps their quarters were not as comfortable as we would like to 
have them ; I saw men sleeping in barns and in improvised 
shelters, but they were not grumbling. They knew the difficul- 
ties of getting supplies across a submarine-infested ocean. They 
knew that when a ship was sunk, the cargo could not be re- 
placed over night ; but they were not complaining. They said. 
"Oh, yes, we know that it is going to take time to get supplies 
over here. We know that our country has built a great machine 
and like all machines, friction is bound to develop in some of the 
bearings." I said they had no complaint. They did have one, 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 209 

and that was at the delay in getting to the front. Every one I 
talked with said, "For God's sake, give us a chance to fight 
before the war is over." 

Let me digress a moment from my narrative and speak of 
our work in Congress. I am a Republican, but party lines no 
longer exist in the Congress of the United States. Republicans 
of the House and Senate have voted for all the measures nec- 
essary to carry on this war and they will continue to vote for 
them without political motives. We have submerged partisanship 
to the single purpose of winning the conflict to which America is 
committed in the shortest possible time, and with the least sacri- 
fice of life. There is no division on political lines in Congress, 
for we are all standing squarely behind the Commander-in-Chief 
of our Army and Navy. 

This war is calling forth the patriotism, the genius, and the 
supreme power of a mighty people. We are proving to the 
world that democracy, which has opened the floodgates to op- 
portunity, can rise to the highest plane of national unity. It is 
a demonstration of democracy in its fullest, truest expression, 
calling upon manhood without distinction and upon wealth with- 
out exception. 

In referring to our boys, let me quote from General Odium, 
of the Eleventh Infantry, Fourth Canadian Division, C. E. F. : 

"We have recently had quite a number of American officers 
attached to us. They are splendid fellows. The Canadians have 
taken to them at once. We have a great deal of faith in them, 
and we wish we were working together. The Americans are 
making a splendid impression over here." 

That night we slept at Chalons and in the morning proceeded 
to Amiens, in northern France, where we were met by British 
officials, who escorted us to a chateau used for the entertainment 
of visitors. On the way to Amiens we drove along the Valley of 
the Marne, for several miles. After crossing the Marne, we 
passed numbers of villages partly destroyed by shell and bomb 
fire. Crossing the Aisne River, we came upon a part of the bat- 
tle field of the Aisne, where we saw wire entanglements and old 
trenches and piles of worn-out army paraphernalia. For miles 
these plains are marked by the devastation of war. Innumerable 
dugouts line the road on either side, just as they were when they 
were abandoned. Two miles north of the river we passed a vil- 
lage blown to atoms, with not a house standing; nothing but 
foundations, with broken walls a few feet high. I saw not a liv- 
ing thing in that city of once happy homes. Yes ; I did see one 



210 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

living thing. It was a raven on the stump of a tree, the only in- 
habitant of this city that had been destroyed by German artillery. 

We lunched at Noyon, which, owing to the rapidity of the 
evacuation of the Germans, has been but little damaged. On 
leaving Noyon we entered the battle field of the Somme, where, 
in the late summer of 191 6, it is said the English suffered 320,000 
casualties and the Germans 500,000. We passed mile after mile 
of complete devastation, where hardly a house remains. A cold, 
drizzling rain was falling, which added to the depressing effect of 
the frightfulness that stretched away in every direction. Just 
as night fell we reached a spot where once stood the city of 
Chaulnes, with a population of ten thousand, now a mass of 
bricks, without even the semblance of a house standing. We 
stood on piles of debris at what was once the center of the city; 
the sight in that dead silence and in the gathering darkness was 
of the ravages of the demon of destruction, in his full power 
of annihilation. Not a sound save the sighing of the winds and 
the falling of the rain, where but a few months ago the 
laughter of children rang out; not a light piercing the night, 
where only a little while age the lamp on the table, in even the 
humblest home, welcomed those children to the family fireside. 
Words fail to describe the anguish and the sorrow of it all. In 
one corner of a wall we saw three mounds marked by the tri- 
colors of the Republic. They are the sentinels of the tomb watch- 
ing over the city of the dead, where the solitude is broken only 
by the wind, moaning as it were, a requiem over the grave- 
yard of homes and happiness; every gust whispering of suf- 
fering, sadness and sacrifice. 

You will pardon me if I wander in my address. You know 
this is not a speech, it is just a simple talk. I know that the 
question has often been asked, "Why can't the advance on the 
Western line be speeded up ?" "Why not push on faster toward 
the Rhine?" We all want to see, as Doctor Williams has just 
said, "more troops sent over to France"; but I do not believe at 
the present time, until we have more ships, that it is a wise 
thing to do. You may ask "Why not ?" I will tell you. Unless 
you are certain of the tonnage on the ocean to carry the food 
supplies, the medical supplies, and to transport reinforcements 
to those men at the front, you are going to endanger their lives 
and handicap the Allies. The whole thing has to be proportioned 
— no more men than you have ships to carry the supplies to. 
The very moment that our Shipping Board increases our ton- 
nage, the very moment that we get more ships, then we will send 
more troops; but until that is done, it will, in my judgment, be 
unwise to overload the Allies. I am not expressing my own 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 211 

opinion, for I am not a military man, but I am giving you this 
suggestion which comes from those who know. The problem 
has been worked out and figures tabulated, showing how many 
tons it will take per man, and how many ships are available with 
the percentage of monthly sinkings. Don't let us be in too much 
of a hurry, so that we may have our boys killed because of lack 
of reinforcement, or suffer because we cannot get supplies to 
them. We are going to do it ; we are going to have the ships ; 
and we are going to have the men there ; but be patient and give 
us a chance to provide for them. 

From the chateau we visited Calais, the great distributing 
point for a part of the British Army. Here is where the sup- 
plies are received and sent forward — ammunition, food and 
everything that is required at the front, from pins to projectiles. 
Many Chinamen are employed in these great storehouses loading 
and unloading ships and trains. They told us a very interest- 
ing story about these Chinamen, who, by the way, came from 
northern China. This town is frequently bombarded from the 
air. After these Chinamen had been here a short time they be- 
came panic-stricken and went to the boss and told him, "We 
came contract to work, no contract bomb." I do not know how 
they settled the strike, but the Chinamen remained. One day, 
when a very heavy bombardment was going on, an officer hap- 
pened to look up at the trees and was amazed to find them full 
of Chinamen who had conceived the idea that it was the safest 
place to be. To assist them in their scramble to the branches, the 
Chinamen had left their shoes behind at the base of the trees. 
As the officer approached he noticed one Chinaman coming to 
the ground and he said to him, "What is the matter; are you 
coming down for your shoes?" "No," said the Chinaman, "me 
no wantee shoes, me wantee tallee tree." 

At Calais are great reconstruction works where everything 
from the battle fields that can be of service is made over and 
sent back to the lines. Immediately after a battle the first con- 
sideration is the care of the wounded and then of the dead. Af- 
ter this the salvage corps depending, of course, upon conditions, 
come with their lorries and gather up everything that is of 
value — helmets, rifles, gas masks, bicycles, wagons, artillery and 
shoes. I was much impressed by one shop employing hundreds 
of persons, where they reconstruct twenty-five thousand pairs of 
shoes a week; they are disinfected, patched, oiled and then 
turned over as good as new, and strange enough, the soldiers pre- 
fer these second-hand shoes to new ones. If some one should 
ask me as to one of the many things that impressed me from a 
business man's standpoint, I would say that it was the system 



212 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

with which this war is being conducted, not only from a military 
standpoint but from an industrial one. It is organized efficiency 
on a grand scale, where nations, not armies, are making a busi- 
ness of warfare. Great Britain, France and Italy realize they are 
not fighting a war as wars have been fought in the past. To-day 
it means mobilization of all man power and the utilization of all 
resources. Sacrifice and economy are synonymous terms in this 
great struggle. 

One of the most impressive facts along the battle fronts 
as well as behind the lines, is the order which prevails every- 
where and in everything. There is neither confusion nor hurry. 
Every man has his appointed task to do and he does it me- 
thodically. Nothing is left to chance, for every action of the 
soldier, every movement of the guns, or supply trains, every ac- 
tion on the land or in the air, goes forward according to a regu- 
lar, closely dovetailed plan. When a barrage is lifted and the 
charge takes place, it is timed to the second, the watches of the 
commanding officers being regulated to the exact time. 

The next morning we drove to Arras, which has been badly 
damaged by shell fire. The great cathedral is a mass of ruins, 
only one arch remaining over the lofty aisle. Wherever there 
had been a bronze tablet or statue in any church or upon any 
monument, they have been chiseled off by the Germans for the 
manufacture of cartridges and fuses. Many troops are stationed 
in Arras, it being close to the firing line. From here we went 
to the American engineers' camp, some distance away. There we 
met the boys from home, many of them from the city of New 
York, and it was a keen pleasure for us to meet them, and, I 
feel, for them to have met us. They were comfortably housed 
in galvanized roofed barracks, ceiled with wood and warmed 
with stoves. They were happy in their condition and satisfied 
with their equipment and food. These engineers were laying 
railroads, digging ditches and building bridges, preparing for the 
great forward move which will mean victory to our arms. We 
went from here to Vimy Ridge, passing on the way innumerable 
dugouts and abandoned barracks. I was much amused by many 
of the signs in these barracks, for the British and Canadians had 
marked the crude streets with names from home. One street 
was called "Piccadilly," another the "Strand," while yet another 
was "Manitoba Boulevard." One sign in particular caught my 
attention. It read, "To Petrograd," with a finger pointing to 
that far-off capital. 

We saw troops going into the lines and troops returning from 
the trenches, the latter very grimy and dirty; but they were 
swinging along the roads in that happy-go-lucky way, which 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 213 

tells that they are in this fight to the finish. We climbed up 
Vimy Ridge, passing by a great gun which had taken part in 
the bombardment only the day before. From the summit of 
Vimy Ridge we obtained a splendid view of Lens, and could see 
the German lines in the distance. The hill was a mass of shell- 
holes, filled, as at Verdun, with the relics of war. In one hole 
I saw the skeleton of a poor soldier whose life had been given 
in the cause for which he fought. We could see the flash of 
the German guns, hear the shriek of the shells, and then would 
come to us the roar of the explosion. We could see where the 
shells struck, for great masses of brick and dust would be 
thrown into the air as the projectiles exploded. The Allies' guns 
would respond, and flash after flash, followed by the roar, came 
to us as we stood there watching this scene of actual warfare. 
Above us, in the clear sky, many airships circled about, taking 
observations and noting the effect of the artillery fire. Vimy 
Ridge will forever stand on the roll of honor of Canada's fight 
for home and freedom. Here the blood of the Dominion soldiers 
was given like water when these brave boys from across the 
border marched up these heights and drove back the Germans. 
Vimy Ridge will stir the blood of Canadians for generations 
to come, for it represents the heroism and courage and the 
supreme sacrifice of Canadian manhood in the great struggle to 
"make the world safe for democracy." 

The next day we went to Albert, which has been only partly 
destroyed. The great modern cathedral, however, is a mass of 
ruins. This famous church of Notre Dame de Bebrieres is 
crowned with a statue of the Virgin, which has bent forward and 
is now hanging from the campanile with the face of the Madonna 
gazing on the ground. The French have the belief that the 
statue will not fall until the war ends in their triumph. From 
there we went to Fricourt, or at least to what had been that city, 
for it exists no longer. 

The whole country shows the effect of the battles that have 
been fought here. For miles and miles it is nothing but desola- 
tion, with the ruins of houses, broken trees, and implements of 
agriculture standing out in the weather, going to decay. In 
many places in this valley of the Somme, the land has been 
so torn up, that it is not possible to raise enough to support a 
single family. It must all be leveled and cleared of the debris 
before people can live here again. We went over many parts 
of this battle field, picking up pieces of shell, grenades and belts. 
We went down into many of the dugouts, great rooms exca- 
vated in the chalky earth, thirty or forty feet below the surface. 
Everything is just as it was when the battle swept over the field, 



214 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

save for the rescue work of the hospital staff and the activities 
of the salvage corps. 

At Peronne we visited the citadel and saw the city a com- 
plete mass of ruins, where the devastation had been planned and 
consummated by the German Army. Some shelling, as at Al- 
bert, had been done by the attacking Allies, but the bulk of the 
destruction had been wrought by the Germans when they evacu- 
ated the place. The favorite way of demolishing a house was 
to blow out the front wall, which would let in the elements and 
eventually cause the whole building to collapse. Street after 
street presented the terrible spectacle of frontless houses, and 
here in the deserted rooms we saw beds, bureaus, and chairs, with 
the carpets still on the floors and pictures on the walls. I 
went into many of these former homes and saw hanging on the 
hooks clothing and hats, just as they were left when the poor 
people were driven out. In one house I saw lying on a table 
a child's tin horse, dented and marred by the little infant who 
had played with it. Where is that little tot to-day ? 

On our way back to Amiens, we stopped at the Butte de 
Warlencourt, which the French Government has reserved as 
a national monument. It is a low salient, only about forty-five 
feet high, and here was witnessed some of the most terrific fight- 
ing of all. Nothing has been touched on this blood-soaked hill. 
Shells and rifles lie about just as they fell, and dead men, too; 
a simple cross crowned with a helmet or twisted rifle marks the 
spot where a nameless hero, a lost but not forgotten son or 
brother, sleeps the eternal sleep. The view from the top is 
awesome. Ruins everywhere as far as the eye can see, an un- 
broken stretch of desolation, destruction, chaos, with the land so 
cut up that one can walk over it only with the greatest dif- 
ficulty. Shell holes and craters, craters and shell holes, crowd one 
upon the other in this inferno of man's making. Every foot of 
land scarred with pits like pockmarks, as if nature herself, under 
the carnage wrought on her bosom, had sickened and died of 
this dread disease. Near by were several abandoned tanks, those 
great caterpillars which have been so effective in many of the 
engagements. We saw one of them that had been destroyed 
by an explosion, which had burned the interior and of course 
killed the crew. In front of it were the graves of the men who 
had manned it. There they lie by that great engine of war, with 
the machine they operated standing as their monument. Farther 
on was a great crater, about thirty feet deep and two hundred 
feet in diameter, the result of the industrious work of the British 
sapper. Above this hole at one time stood some German bar- 
racks, but when the explosion took place soldiers, wagons and 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 215 

mules were thrown into the air, lost forever to the German 
cause. Men are not only killed in these mine explosions, but 
their bodies are dismembered — bleeding fragments of men and 
animals, equipment and trench paraphernalia mingle in a grue- 
some heap. As an officer who had seen the explosion, said to 
me, "Some of those Germans haven't come down yet." 

Even at the risk of tiring my audience with a narrative which 
I feel is already too extended, I cannot omit mentioning the 
noble work being done by the Red Cross, the Young Men's 
Christian Association, the Knights of Columbus and other 
kindred organizations. This war, which is a battle of nations, 
fighting not alone on the firing line, but throughout their length 
and breadth, calls to humanity for help and the Red Cross has 
answered generously, ably and fully. Its workers minister to 
the sick and wounded, reconstruct villages, purge towns of 
disease, supply farm implements and seeds, and carry on re- 
lief wherever it is needed. It has established canteens and bath- 
houses on the firing line, supplied milk to babies and food and 
clothing to the old and feeble. In the operating rooms, in 
tuberculosis wards, in tenements, in devastated villages, in 
stricken homes, it has made France, Belgium, and Italy know 
that America from across the seas is at their side and will be 
with them till the end. In addition, and primary to the prac- 
tical relief to the military and civilian population of our allies, the 
Red Cross stands ready to care for our own soldiers and sailors 
on duty, wherever and whenever that care may be needed. It is 
cooperating with the Army and Navy for the protection of the 
health and welfare of soldiers in camps and cantonments and 
has established agencies for the care of dependent familes of 
men in the naval and military service. 

Closely allied to the Red Cross are the Young Men's Christian 
Association and Knights of Columbus organizations. They are 
the foster mothers to these faraway boys of ours, supplying the 
home influences to the men in uniform, giving to our valiant 
fighters a spark of spiritual life, cheering them in the perform- 
ance of their duty, comforting them in their loneliness and 
stimulating their mental and social instinct under proper guid- 
ance. It is impossible to more than touch upon the varied ac- 
tivities of these splendid institutions, the hotels and restaurants 
maintained for soldiers arriving or on leave of absence, the huts 
with dining rooms, sleeping accommodations and reading rooms 
supplied with American papers and magazines where men can read 
and write to their families at home, the portable lunch-counters 
awaiting incoming trains, the rest stations and bath-houses near 
the front, refreshment booths, the canteens which supply wants, 



216 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

the entertainments and moving-picture shows, the circulating li- 
braries, concerts, lecture-courses, religious and educational classes, 
sports and sight-seeing trips, and the ever-present offer of friend- 
ship, sympathy and assistance to all in distress or perplexity. 

On our return to Paris we were given receptions by the Presi- 
dent of the French Republic and by the Speaker of the Cham- 
ber of Deputies, as well as by the Premier. Nothing was left 
undone to make our visit both instructive and enjoyable. From 
Paris we went to Belgium — desolate, almost annihilated Belgium. 
To-day Belgium is only twenty-six miles long and six miles wide. 
It is not as large as my own Nassau County, but there in that 
little remnant of a nation resides Albert, the heroic King of Bel- 
gium, who will not leave his native soil. It was on his birthday 
that we arrived in Belgium, and he invited us to come to his 
simple house. We were dressed in our trench clothes. I had on 
a pair of blue overalls, heavy tan shoes, an old flannel shirt and 
a sweater; and I assure you it was hardly court attire for a 
reception. But the King was glad to see us, because he knew we 
came as sympathizing friends and that we were representing the 
power, the prestige and the purposes of the great Republic of the 
West, with its hundred and ten millions of free and determined 
people. That great democrat, King Albert, six feet six inches, 
stood in his home and welcomed us in a most democratic manner. 
He said, "We are going to continue to fight until every Belgian 
is killed and Belgium is no more." I asked him what message I 
could take back with me to America. He laid his hand on my 
shoulder and said, "Take this message to your people : Tell them 
that without their generous aid my people would have starved to 
death, and from the bottom of my heart I thank them." When 
we left the headquarters of the King it was about six o'clock in 
the evening, and as we came out into the darkness, the sky to the 
northeast was bespangled by the flash of guns on the firing line 
and there was an incessant roar of cannonading which shook the 
ground on which we stood. 

We went to our hotel but a few miles from the line and 
at two-thirty a. m., my room being on the side of the hotel fac- 
ing the line, I was awakened by the roar of a terrific bom- 
bardment. It kept up for forty-five minutes as the big guns along 
the battle front saluted each other with deadly shells. We had 
breakfast at four-thirty and with darkness still about us set out 
for the trenches. We arrived about daybreak at the point where 
we were to enter the communicating trench which led to the 
front line on the Dixmude sector. We found that the bombard- 
ment of the morning had destroyed many parts of these trenches. 
There were great holes in the road, and a few dead horses were 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 217 

lying about. We saw, too, soldiers who had been killed within 
an hour being carried back to the cemetery. We were all pro- 
vided with gas masks and steel helmets in case of an attack ; for 
we were going to the frontier of "No man's land." The fields 
we passed were desolate, ground torn up, fences down, trees 
broken and shattered, for the country surrounding this section 
of the line has been for months in the war zone. Every house 
had long since been pounded into fragments, the only habita- 
tions being the rude, improvised shelters erected by artillery- 
men from the debris that lay scattered about. 

Just as we entered the communicating trench two gray Ger- 
man airships swept over our heads, and as our costumes were 
of a different color from the uniform of the Belgian soldiers, we 
felt certain that our presence was known. The trenches were a 
mass of mud, slimy and treacherous. Crude wooden revetments 
lined the bottom of the zigzag ditches, over which we slipped and 
stumbled. We passed many dugouts — concrete bombproof struc- 
tures — in which men were sleeping on straw or blankets spread 
on the wet ground. Here a few soldiers performing their morn- 
ing toilet from a bucket of water, there a group preparing break- 
fast over an improvised stove of stones and discarded tin cans. 
Everything was mixed with dirt, mud and slimy water, but the 
men were cheerful and bright and looked healthy despite their 
comfortless surroundings. They all saluted us, for they knew 
we were Americans and that our Nation had come to help their 
crushed country. 

As most of us were fairly tall, we had to keep our heads 
well down, for these trenches were built for Belgian soldiers who 
are not as tall as we, and we knew that ''somewhere in Flanders" 
— and that less than a hundred yards away — the boche had de- 
clared an open season for Americans. These trenches are dif- 
ferent from those we had seen elsewhere, for as the land 
here is low and wet they are built above ground, being constructed 
by piling up bags of dirt which are reenforced by wooden stakes. 
"No man's land" was a great lake, with several feet of water 
and mud between the opposing lines, for the Belgians, to prevent 
an infantry attack, had flooded the land between the trenches. 
Finally we came to the front-line trenches, with the Germans 
only forty yards away. We were among the men charged with 
the duty of holding the line or dying in the attempt Then came 
to me that admonition of Demosthenes to the Athenians : 

"Go yourselves, every man of you and stand in the ranks 
and either a victory beyond all victories in its glory awaits you 
or falling you shall fall greatly and worthily of your past." 



218 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Trench mortars, machine guns, rifles, hand grenades, cart- 
ridges, gas masks, helmets, all were in place ready for instant use. 
That we had been discovered was soon evident, for we had 
hardly reached the front trench before the Germans opened fire. 
We crouched down in a heap as the machine guns and the snipers 
concentrated their fusillade upon us. Zip, zip, the vicious bul- 
lets flew over our heads or with a thud embedded themselves in 
the soft dirt of the trench a foot or two from us. We were 
spattered by mud, but fortunately none were hit. Then they 
opened with howitzers. The whine of the shells is an uncanny 
sound, half moan, half screech, and it is a peculiar sensation to 
have these projectiles, intended for your destruction, come 
screaming towards you. First you hear the sound on the left, 
then on the right, then it seems as though the shell were directly 
overhead, the roar gaining in intensity until the shell strikes the 
earth. Fortunately, all of the projectiles passed over us and 
exploded in the mud several hundred yards away. The captain 
who had escorted us to the front deemed it unwise for us to 
remain longer, so we retired to safer ground. The one great 
trouble about these visits to the trenches, aside from the personal 
danger, is the fact that after the visitors leave, the poor soldiers 
who remain at their posts must endure the bombardment. While 
we were in this front line an officer was killed just next to us and 
a soldier wounded. 

That morning's bombardment — the one which had awakened 
us — had destroyed parts of the communicating trench, leaving 
great gaps fully exposed to the enemy's fire. Coming in, as 
there was no firing, we did not realize our danger; but on our 
return, knowing that the Boche were aware of our presence, these 
gaps became real danger spots. We would wait a moment on 
one side of the broken trench and then throw ourselves across 
the opening in the hope that the sharpshooters would not have 
time to bag us. At one gap I asked the captain where one of 
the machine guns which was playing on us, was located. He 
said, "J us t. over there where you see the old foundations of a 
mill." I peered around the open space — I can assure you my 
head did not protrude very far — and looked in the direction the 
captain indicated. There, sure enough, about sixty yards away 
I saw the machine gun resting on the wall of the old mill and 
could see the flames spurt from the barrel as the gunner blazed 
away at us. We then visited the northern part of the line and 
met the major in command. He invited us to his palace. We 
found it a miserable little lean-to, built against the only remain- 
ing wall of a house, just large enough for two or three people 
to squeeze into. We told him that after the war we would visit 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 219 

him in his headquarters in Brussels. "Surest thing you know," 
he replied in perfect American, and we felt very much at home. 

I am going now, for just a moment, to England. I wish I 
could tell you about the gallant fleet we saw anchored in the 
North of England, but that is taboo. I am going to take you 
to Glasgow and tell you that there, on the Clyde, they are to- 
day manufacturing not only ships, large and small, but aero- 
planes, tanks, ammunition of all kinds. We saw the great Sin- 
ger Sewing Machine factory, not making sewing machines, but 
turning out thousands and thousands of great shells, and thou- 
sands and thousands of fuses. I can't tell you the number, but 
if Germany thinks that Great Britain is getting short of ammu- 
nition or supplies, she has got to revise her estimates. 

From Glasgow we went to Carlisle, and there we saw the 
wonderful powder plant that employs twenty thousand persons, 
one-half of whom are women. Eighteen months ago there was 
nothing here but a green pasture. To-day over sixty thousand 
people have their homes in this locality. They have schools, 
lecture-rooms, stores, theaters, bakeries, electric lights — every- 
thing that a complete city has. We went through the houses 
where the employees live. The girls, if they are without their 
families, are quartered in large wooden buildings called "cubi- 
cals," one-story dormitories accommodating ninety-six girls each 
in charge of a matron and an assistant. Each girl has her own 
little room, partly inclosed, furnished with a bed and bureau, 
and there is in each cubical a general assembly room for read- 
ing and social meetings. Everything in this plant is carried on 
with mathematical precision. Every ounce of powder is an exact 
ounce, for any variation in the quantity anywhere along the line 
would upset the range of the guns on the firing line. At first 
they had great difficulty in making the girls realize the impor- 
tance of accuracy, and many cases were reported of overcharges. 
When spoken to, the girls would reply, "What difference does 
it make? It's all for Jock and a little extra good measure 
will help him win the fight." Here let me pay my tribute to 
the splendid womanhood of Great Britain, to the women, who, 
irrespective of social position or financial standing, are doing 
their part in the great struggle. Each is doing her bit, the best 
she knows how, heroically, nobly. No sacrifice is too great, 
no hardship too severe, whether it be in the hospitals, in the 
workshops, on the farms, in the offices, their determination, 
their zeal and their courage surmount all difficulties and nerve 
them to face sorrow and suffering without a murmur. Am- 
bassador Page related an instance which happened to him. He 
knew a lady and gentleman of rank and wealth who had an only 



220 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

son. This boy volunteered in the army. One day Mr. Page 
met the lady at a reception, and with a smile on her face, she 
came up to him and said, "Mr. Page, have you heard of the 
great honor which has come to my husband and myself?" He, 
knowing of the promise of the boy and the brightness of his 
future as well as of the hopes they had in him as the heir of 
their title and wealth, supposed, of course, she referred to some 
promotion. He said, "No ; I have not heard of the honor." She 
replied, "Our boy has been killed fighting for his country." My 
friends, when you think of what this must have meant to that 
woman, when you think of what the heartache must have been 
as she faced the future, you can realize what courage means 
when the supreme test comes, and her case is only one of thou- 
sands. From the mansion to the hut, the poor and the wealthy, 
the high and the low, meet on common ground in the great democ- 
racy of patriotism and death. 

Let me recount another pathetic story, or at least one show- 
ing the splendid spirit of these magnificent women. While in 
Flanders I became acquainted with an auto driver, a young sol- 
dier who had been in the regular army, had been wounded and 
honorably discharged and then had volunteered as chauffeur. 
He asked me which way I was going home, and I told him by 
way of Liverpool. He said, "I have a mother in Chester, and 
would it be asking too much if you would go and see her?" I 
told him if I were to be in Liverpool I would also be in Chester 
and that I would call on his mother. I did so, and found the 
address he had given me in a very lowly part of the city. It 
was a simple house, a humble home. I knocked at the door 
and an elderly woman with pleasant face and kindly manner 
greeted me. Sleeves rolled up and a great apron showed that 
she was at work in her kitchen. I told her I came with a mes- 
sage from her boy and her face became radiant as the sun. She 
invited me to the kitchen where she was preparing dinner, and 
I met there her five daughters who had come home from their 
work to take lunch with their mother. I told her her boy was 
safe and happy and had sent his love to her and his sisters. 
She said, "Oh, he is a good boy; he is the hope of my life. I 
have been his father as well as his mother, because my hus- 
band died when he was only two years old. When the war 
came he was determined to do his part and enlisted. I did not 
try to stop him. After his honorable discharge on account of 
his wounds I thought perhaps he would stay at home, but he 
was not satisfied because he thought there was still some work 
he could do and so he enlisted in the auto service. I did not 
argue with him, for I knew where his heart was and mine was 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 221 

there too; it was the call of duty." She told me that her five 
daughters were all in the service, one in an ammunition plant, 
one in a gun factory, one a conductor on a trolley car. I have 
forgotten what the other two were doing, but they were all 
doing their bit in the war; and then the mother said, "Hus- 
band gone, one son at the front, five girls at work, my only 
regret is that I have no more children to give in the cause 
of my country." 

That is the spirit of the hour to-day in France and Great 
Britain, in Canada, in Australia, in Italy. It is the spirit of free- 
dom and liberty ringing out from brave hearts. That is the spirit 
which inspired Washington and the patriots of our own Revolu- 
tion. It is the spirit, too, of America of the present, calling to 
her sons and daughters in this hour of trial. That is the spirit 
that impels men to follow onward and plant the old flag forward 
in the fight. 

You may ask me how long this war is going to last, and I 
say, I do not know. You may ask me how many men it is going 
to take to win this war, and again I answer, I do not know. But 
I do know this, that no matter how long it may take, or how 
many men it may take, the war is going on backed by all the 
resources of this country, until it is won for justice, liberty and 
righteousness. The pathway we are going to follow is a path- 
way of hardships and of sacrifice and of trials. It is a path 
that will lead by the graves of sons and of brothers, heroes who 
have fallen in the fight; it will lead down into the darkness of 
sorrows, into the vale of tears; but it is the pathway to that 
victory which will mean a permanent peace and the supremacy 
of the principles of our Republic now and for evermore. 



TWO: BY REVEREND ISAAC J. LANSING 

We are told that "Governments derive their just powers from 
the consent of the Governed." This noble phrase from the im- 
mortal Declaration of Independence, is sometimes said to contain 
the adequate definition of a democracy. But this quotation re- 
quires explanation. If it means that all governments derive 
their just powers from the active consent of those governed, we 
must urge that this is plainly untrue, since the women living 
under such governments and constituting fully one-half of their 
responsible inhabitants, have rarely or never been asked their con- 
sent in any form of government. This fact alone invalidates 
the quotation as a definition. 



222 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

If the statement means that all who live under a government 
must give active or passive consent, it then appears that no 
government exists wherein there is not a considerable minority 
which lives in a constant state of protest against it ; and these 
are not all law breakers necessarily, but oftentimes are the 
most progressive of its people. The truth is that governments 
derive their just powers not primarily from the consent of men 
but from the universal and benevolent laws of God, laws not 
primarily made or amended, neither created nor repealed by any 
human legislative body. Nor can they ever be. They are the 
established code of an eternal order. 

A few days ago the Premier of Great Britain, Mr. Lloyd 
George, in a very impressive speech to an industrial Convention, 
denning democracy, used these words: "Democracy, in plain 
terms, is the rule of the Majority." But from time to time in 
our own country, which we claim to be representatively demo- 
cratic, the Administration, under our system of voting, has been 
elected by a minority of the voters voting, and a more marked 
minority of all the legal voters. And in such a case if the ad- 
ministration is partisan, the will of the majority is subordinated 
to that of the minority. If it is said that the majority passively 
consent, it would not help matters to say that in a government 
ruled by a minority to whose rule the majority consents, the 
result is a democracy. It might be an oligarchy. 

Once again, we note that a few days ago the Japanese, who 
have really an autocratic government, hearing so much said 
by us and others about our purpose to foster democracy, took 
alarm and inquired whether they were to understand that we 
purposed to make of their government a democracy, — a natural 
and very embarrassing question. To this the minister of the 
United States in their country replied, that "The Allies were 
fighting not for democracy in nations but for democracy among 
nations." Deft and novel as this turn of speech may be, you 
cannot suppose that it satisfied the acute Japanese mind. No 
more does it satisfy our own. It may state a fact or it may 
not, but if this is the test of democracy, then our government in 
the past, and that of monarchical states which have constitutions 
and parliaments, are not warranted in being classed as democ- 
racies. 

Once more, by your leave, I note that a sagacious publicist 
has recently said: "In an autocracy, the administration directs 
the people and their representatives ; in a democracy, the people 
direct their administrator or administrators." The day after I 
first read this, the "Overman Bill" was presented to the Senate 
of the United States, by request of the President, asking that 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 223 

Congress which had recently granted him powers in excess of 
those of almost any monarch on earth, should add almost in- 
definitely to those powers. Is it not obvious that the President 
for practically all the term of his presidency, has constrained 
and directed the representatives of the people, and so the people 
themselves? If this is true, as it appears to me to be, then this 
fourth definition of democracy is not applicable to this country. 

You have borne with me while I have tried to prove to you 
that I do not so fully know what democracy is that I would as- 
sume to define it or its aims to you. And I shall be very glad if 
you know so well what I do not know that I need not try further 
to define it. 

Our general topic is "The Spiritual Aims and Gains of the 
Nation." This subject I should be able in some degree to il- 
luminate. I am well aware that I am in the presence of states- 
men, lawyers, soldiers, philanthropists and masters of affairs. 
Each of you know much that I do not know as well as you 
know it, about statecraft, law, military affairs, and various spe- 
cialties relating to the public welfare. Toward your larger 
knowledge I feel a becoming deference and respect. My spe- 
cialty is the things of the spiritual life as relating to God and 
man. Trusting to the large hospitality of your minds, may I be 
permitted to reveal my own thinking on the subject which, 
as a minister of God to men, I ought to know more about than 
any other. Let me speak as a Christian teacher who seeks to 
have also the vision of a statesman. 

All that I say will be within the limits of the defined policies 
and purposes of that American statesman now everywhere ac- 
claimed as most worthy of the respect and honor of all who 
love liberty under law, Abraham Lincoln. Of his spiritual 
vision and piety as applied to the conduct of weighty affairs in 
which he won immortal fame, Mr. James G. Blaine, one of our 
most honored names, thus speaks in his "Twenty Years in 
Congress": "Throughout the whole period of the (Civil) War, 
he (Mr. Lincoln) constantly directed the attention of the nation 
to dependence on God. It may indeed be doubted whether he 
omitted this in a single state paper. In every message to Con- 
gress, in every proclamation to the people, he made this promi- 
nent. 

"In July, 1863, after the Battle of Gettysburg, he called on 
the people to give thanks because 'it hath pleased Almighty God 
to hearken to the supplications and prayers of an afflicted people, 
and to vouchsafe signal and effective victories to the Army and 
Navy of the United States,' and he asked the people 'to render 
homage to the Divine Majesty and to invoke the influence of His 



224 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has produced and so 
long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion.' ..,.1.-1 

"On another occasion, recounting the blessings which had 
come to the Union, he said, 'No human counsel hath devised 
nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They 
are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, Who while deal- 
ing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered 
mercy.' 

"Throughout his entire official career,— attended at all times 
with exacting duty and painful responsibility,— he never forgot 
his own dependence or the dependence of the people upon a 
Higher Power. 

"In his last public address, delivered to an immense crowd 
assembled at the White House on the nth of April, 1865, to 
congratulate him on the victories of the Union, the President, 
standing as he unconsciously was, in the very shadow of death, 
said reverently to his hearers, 'In the midst of your joyous 
expression, He from Whom all blessings flow must first be re- 
membered.' "... 

This reflection of Mr. Lincoln's thought and spirit, attested 
by his eminent contemporary, may well impress upon us the 
wisdom and the source of true and immortal statesmanship, and 
vindicate, if it needs vindication, my purpose to discuss the 
emergence out of this war of those spiritual certainties which 
have appeared and will more fully appear to those who watch 
for the stars which are rising on the brow of this dark and 
dreadful night. 

What broadest principles of enduring life, principles which 
are momentous and everlasting, essential to the life of human 
society and the continuance of the civil state, have become clear 
since the war began and are destined to grow clearer as long as 
reason and life last? A selected few of these permit me to 
discuss. 

First: Materialism is discredited, stripped and repudiated 
— materialism, affirming physical energy but denying the soul, 
rejecting God and lightly regarding authoritative morals, has 
been rampant. Its creed is atheistic ; its fundamental theory is of 
a Godless world. It declares matter sufficient unto itself to 
produce itself, to account for itself, to guide itself, to be in itself 
an end and goal, and all without God. It has been assumed, 
allowed, promulgated, accepted as having its adequate basis in 
atheistic evolution. Evolution without God, blind, without fore- 
sight or mind, if begun at all, proceeding by an irresistible force, 
(whether backward or forward it offers no criteria to prove), in 
which human life appears as other life appears, doing what i/ 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 225 

must, without controlling volition and without either duty or 
obligation, — this had become the conceived background, the 
alleged cause, the assumed uncontrolled certainty in individual 
and collective life. 

Germany, possessed with this prevalent idea, has exalted to 
the position of axioms of interpretation in social and national 
life, the two fundamental passwords, supposed to govern the 
origin of species, namely, 'The struggle for life," and the 
"Survival of the fittest." They were logical in assuming that 
if these tests are true anywhere, they are true everywhere; that 
if they apply to the human species at all they apply to it always 
and under all circumstances. What more natural or pleasing in 
their life than to conclude, as they might say, irresistibly, that 
they, as individuals and as a people, had made the "struggle for 
life" in competition with other peoples, and had proved in them- 
selves by their superiority, as they conceived it, that their fitness 
was the fitness of "the fittest" and their "survival" was actually 
and prophetically assured. This they had the courage to affirm. 
In so doing their main premise being allowed, they were perfectly 
logical. They were carrying their theory to its practical applica- 
tion and limit. 

Out of this process emerged for Nietzsche, "The Superman" 
which (or who) is the finality in his conception and philosophy 
of the individual, and that of Germany which follows him. The 
"superman" is he who is superior to all but himself, superior to 
all law but that of his own volition, a perfect egoist, who, 
untrammeled and of necessity, sacrifices all to himself. In self- 
assertion he holds his might to be the only right, and he prac- 
tically worships himself, his own desires and his own will. 

Treitschke, chief of Germany's political philosophers, their 
acknowledged master, at first strongly averse to Nietzsche, later 
took advantage of the latter's suggestion to affirm that the "super- 
state" was the one and only superior of the "superman" — the 
state affirming its will, its unrivaled and uncontradicted demands, 
from which there could be no appeal and beyond which no right. 
The affirmation of German superiority is a natural and logical 
result of the doctrine of evolution without God, — materialistic 
evolution. Fixing on this their gaze, the whole teaching force of 
this empire proceeded to work out and to teach its philosophy 
through all its educative agencies, until, after the lapse of years, 
it came to be the fixed belief of their intellectuals, their civil 
leaders and their military men. Might being declared to be the 
only right, and might only and always materialism in one or 
another form, from this they reasoned that they had before them 
the duty and the destiny of subjugating the world. The scheme 



226 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

of thought has governed their education, has made their theory 
of the Nation; their theory has ultimated in their policy and 
conduct, and ignoring all that the rest of the world holds as the 
true theory and right action of men and nations, they have 
undertaken to conquer the world, which they despise as inferior 
in its evolution to themselves. They are absolutely true to the 
doctrine of evolution as they hold it, having no God over all and 
no spiritual nature in man. And this is called a "scientific" view, 
that being a momentous word with which to conjure confidence. 

Asserting it, gave them an assumed leadership in education. 
Their imitators were found in many lands, their propagandists 
everywhere. Their idea of themselves they wished us all to 
entertain, and an idea of ourselves which subordinated us to 
them. Mr. Poultney Bigelow, who, I believe, was in the Uni- 
versity with the Kaiser, well says: "The great German propa- 
ganda is more than twenty years old and was part of a general 
scheme to prepare the United States for the war in which we are 
now engaged. Not only the Imperial Staff of the German army 
acted as a central bureau of information on all things American ; 
but the schools, the universities and societies for the propagation 
of Deutschthum and Deutsche Kitltur were steered by military 
officials to prepare the American mind for a beneficent German 
Empire in which a Germanized America would be one of the 
many provinces bowing down to a Germanized Augustus Caesar. 

"Every American school, university or scientific institution 
was feeling the spell of this propaganda without knowing its 
source. American colleges were commencing to feel that there 
was little worth learning in France or England — that the goal 
of academic ambition was a Berlin or Leipzig Ph. D. degree. 
The arrogance of all Prussian professors at our seats of learning 
was mistaken by us for the assertiveness of great masters and we 
little dreamed that these poisonous pundits thought more of a 
Fourth Class Red Ribbon in Berlin than of the good will of their 
colleagues of Harvard or Ann Arbor. 

"And then the Exchange Professors and the visit of Prince 
Henry, and the Germanic Museum for Harvard, and the statue of 
Frederick the Great for Washington and the persistent and nau- 
seating celebration where glasses were raised to the 'traditional 
friendship' of the two countries — and all the while the great 
general staff of Berlin was feverishly at work preparing plans 
for an invasion of America on the Belgian-Rumanian plan." 
With Mr. Bigelow agree the best informed students of affairs 
everywhere. 

Plainly stated their purpose is the mastery, enslavement and 
robbery of all nations. This purpose is now resisted by all but 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 227 

their present dupes and slaves, and the principles which they 
profess are equally repudiated. If we were once blindly drifting 
into their way of thinking, we now renounce it. Their philosophy 
is no longer philosophy, their science is no longer science to us. 
Both are Prussianism at its worst. In every realm we have 
partially conceded to them the primacy which they have claimed. 
Now we see their falseness and our folly. Their high priests of 
science falsely so called, have not the first quality of a scientific 
mind, namely truthfulness — the love of truth. In the first year 
of the war nearly one hundred of the most distinguished of them 
drew up and signed a declaration addressed "to the civilized 
world" in which among other statements, these are given 
prominence: "It is not true that Germany is guilty of having 
caused this war. It is not true that the life and property of 
a single Belgian citizen was injured by our soldiers without the 
bitterest self-defence having made it necessary. It is not true 
that our troops treated Louvain brutally. It is not true that 
our warfare pays no respect to international laws." A distin- 
guished American specialist in physical science truthfully says, 
"In these false declarations by German scientists whose names, 
many of them, are household words, — declarations which have 
never been withdrawn — German science has met the greatest 
downfall in her history." Yet these are the leaders, the masters 
who have been sought, lauded and blindly followed for two 
generations as having the right, because they claimed it, to 
reconstruct human ideals and thought on the basis of their scien- 
tific dixit. We are ashamed of our fatuous folly. These 
immoral, inhuman slaves of their Prussian masters have been 
sought to teach us science, theology, sociology. What are aca- 
demic degrees worth, given by such critics and professors ? They 
have sown the wind; we are now reaping the whirlwind. Their 
materialism is bringing forth its expected and legitimate fruit. 
Their national goal is consistent with their characters and word. 
They may be willing to be slaves to Prussia. We are not. 
Their national aims may be consistent with their theory though 
without a shred of morality or humanity. One such nation 
wrought out on their materialistic plan is one too many. We 
repudiate their theory. We are shamed by our own act in 
having followed them. We abandon materialism as an aim for 
our own or any other nation. And I hope we are penitent 
for the misery which we have caused by foolishly following 
such pretenders. 

Second: Wealth as an object of worship is dethroned. — 
It had been allowed to usurp the throne of God. Of this peril 
we had been warned ages ago. The great Saviour of the world 



228 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

lived and wrought in an age when sculptured and painted idols 
were everywhere and mythologies about these were religion. Of 
any one of these idols of wood and stone, He never spoke; 
concerning them, He uttered no warning. There was but one 
idol to whom He alluded as disputing with the one true and 
living God the homage of men. It was Mammon. And Mam- 
mon had never been painted or sculptured. It was merely a 
name, used three times in the New Testament, for wealth as an 
object of worship. Christ knew that long after all worship of 
stones was abandoned, wealth would dispute with the true God 
the devotion of men. 

Our age illustrated the fact. Money, or wealth, has been 
the measure and gauge of success. He who gained it was the 
envied and successful man. Gradations of society have been 
fixed by it. The upper class has been the rich; the lower class 
the poor. Pride, show, splendor, extravagance, have been the 
touchstone of coveted life. Moral and spiritual standards have 
been subordinated to gain. The market was esteemed more 
than the martyr. Lying to gain financial advantage was ac- 
counted venial. Education was bent to moneymaking vocations. 
At length the naked wickedness of Mammon worship became 
clear, as the German-Austrian-Turkish robbers began to assault 
and plunder the world. When empires lie, break treaties and 
steal, the magnitude of the disaster frightens us. The lust of 
wealth in this so-called cultured age, then takes on a fury if 
ever equalled, certainly never surpassed. Wealth was so lordly 
and so mighty that we had been told that there could never be 
a general European war, that the bankers of Europe would not 
permit it; their money power would be the final arbiter. When 
the actual crisis came they had no more power than children 
armed with reeds, pushing back the avalanche. Mammon at- 
tacked, was afraid. It could not protect itself nor the world 
which had worshiped it. In dire extremity, it called for help; 
called on Patriotism to come to the rescue. But even patriotism 
was enfeebled by subordination to wealth, lying with its head 
in Mammon's lap, like Samson in Delilah's. At length patriotism 
slowly broke from deadly dalliance and called on Honor, Liberty, 
Humanity, Morality, to come to the rescue and save wealth and 
country. And these powers not material but spiritual; not the 
creatures nor the worshipers of wealth but the offspring of the 
living God, leaped up and entered the fray. Hindered so long 
but ever persistent, they alone could defend Mammon which 
they always regarded as a slave. Like Dagon before the ark of 
the Lord, Mammon groveled and begged. Its prestige and its 
power were gone. It could not help itself, much less defend 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 229 

others. Then we saw and confessed that we had a primary 
duty to One higher than money; that the things of the spirit 
were most worth saving, that for them we might wisely spend all 
our wealth. And at the call of Patriotism, Honor, Morality, 
Liberty and Humanity, we began to pour forth the accumulated 
and stored treasures of years. They became a sacrifice on the 
altar of eternal spiritual good. By spiritual energy, motive and 
intelligence they made wealth a powerful defensive agency. 

How better can this great fact be shown than by the motive 
and the act which gave fifty million dollars to the work of the 
Young Men's Christian Association? The gift was asked to 
make great and noble the souls of our soldiery. Early in the 
war the cry came that the first thing in the making of a first- 
rate soldier was the spirit of him. The French called it the 
"morale," best paraphrased as "the state of mind." It meant 
everything which operates in the inner and spiritual life of the 
men; sympathy, duty, care, purity, cheer, faith, fealty, spirit- 
uality, loyalty to the unseen and the Eternal. From the spiritual 
energy and wisdom which saw and urged the need, came the 
outpouring of our gold, now doing its worthiest service. And 
now we know that wealth is a good servant and can ever be such ; 
a servant of man, of the man with a soul, and with a duty to 
God and to his fellows, but nevermore enthroned as master of 
souls. Money is the servant of God and the servant of men. 
It should cease from now on to be the boast, the hope, the 
goal of life and be only its servant. We are laying it on the 
altar of God and humanity. It shall never dispute His throne. 

Third: God is enthroned as the essential head of govern- 
ment. — The recent past has seen the rise of numerous speculative 
theories of human life and society. With differing labels they 
have had a general likeness, and without practical tests, have 
gained credence. Because new, they have been assumed to be 
true, if indeed they can be said to be as original as they are 
vague and novel. Private morals and public duties have been 
thrown into confusion. Most of these theories have had this in 
common, that they were atheistic efforts to do without God 
and to be substitutes for religion and morals. Two of these 
may stand for the rest, Anarchism and Socialism. In practical 
application Anarchism is adverse to all governments and all 
government. It objects to all morals and moral laws, protests 
against restraint, opposes rule and rulers, and is not only oblivious 
of God but rages against Him. Not definable in few words, it 
rejects almost all institutions and the principles on which they 
are founded; calls all morality "slave morality," and assumes 
that each individual is the only authoritative ruler. Within a 



230 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

few weeks a woman now in a United States prison, holding 
all these ideas in a most outspoken form, has assembled an 
audience of three thousand in New York, and held them for 
three hours in enthusiastic approval of her words, while she 
has denounced practically all individual, social and legal re- 
straints. That audience, composed largely of people recently 
come to this country, is representative of great numbers in this 
and other lands who endorse these crazy dreams. They sys- 
tematically teach to young children all these subversive ideas, 
and practice, defiantly, their teachings. One prominent among 
them, once a Christian minister, in a widely circulated volume, 
strenuously objects to the idea of God as Father, declaring 
that we neither need nor want a father — God, nor any kind of 
relation which suggests subordination and dependence. 

Socialism in its most strenuous forms, as in the German 
Social Democracy, is an association of people, found in many 
countries, which is difficult to define briefly and characterize ; 
difficult to define because there is no authoritative representative 
whose definitions are standard ; and not easy to describe because 
there are many varying stages of the thought, which do not agree 
one with another. Allowing for these variations, we may take the 
mass of the Social Democrats in Germany and their sympathizers 
in Russia for illustration. All are atheistic, selfish, intolerant, 
violent against wealth and equally against work, whose pur- 
pose is to dispossess those who have any accumulated property, 
or any control of machinery, business and goods, and to re- 
arrange the whole direction and ownership of the same. The 
Bolsheviki represent a sufficiently large number of these to illus- 
trate what they may do if they gain control in any land. The 
product of these theories is in sight. It is chaos. Russia is 
illustrating it. Here is a headless nation, because it is without 
control, without law, without government, and pervaded with 
a reckless sense of irresponsibility to any power human or 
divine. 

Stability in a community, a state, a nation, must rest on a 
foundation of laws ; these on an underlying foundation of prin- 
ciples and these must express reverence for duties and rights, 
and good will for one's neighbors. The deepest principle is a 
sense of Right and this has been placed in the constitution of 
things by the Creator. Out of Right as conceived and affirmed 
by God, come rights, duties, authority, government, order, har- 
mony and prosperity. By these are upheld honor and liberty, in 
their only true and reasonable definitions and sanctions. On 
anarchy you cannot predicate order. Its outcome is chaos, con- 
fusion. 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 231 

In a godless society, right, authority and government are 
impossible. These must be founded on God and derived from 
Him. And He from Whom these are derived and by Whom 
sanctioned, is and must be much more than a Being of might, 
authorizing any and all actions which one can assert the power 
and the will to do. Sanctioning virtue He must possess it. If 
He were without holiness or righteousness, mercy or love, He 
could neither direct nor demand these. The basis of society is 
not any conception of God which a heathen or a Prussian may 
conceive to best correspond to his ambitions, but the one and 
only God, the God of universal man, of universal right and of 
universal law. Human good will must find its sanction in 
Divine good will and the spring of good will in man or God, 
is and must be love. Out of this attribute comes and becomes 
all benevolent feeling and beneficent law. As we know God, 
the ultimate statute of His kingdom is the command to men 
to love Him and to love one another. Unless He is lovable 
in His character no one, by being commanded, could be com- 
pelled to love Him. A god of mere Might or a man in whom 
Might, is all, does not suggest love nor show love, nor show the 
least possibility of evoking it. A nation to which Might is 
supreme, cannot know love and cannot be loved. Unless there 
is the sanction of the heart to the principles, purposes and mo- 
tives of government, it cannot hold and direct the race. And 
laws arbitrarily forced upon men by a characterless being, must 
issue in characterless society. 

The God who being enthroned, assures social order (includ- 
ing civil), must be the God who is revealed as Power and Love 
with all that these imply. And there is but One who has ever 
been revealed to men who has this character. He is the living 
God whom Jesus Christ especially has made known to us. And 
so Christ revealing Him becomes "the chief corner stone" of the 
world order, and love becomes its vital and universal prin- 
ciple. Any other view of man and society leaves the individual 
selfish, greedy, cruel and detached. At the same time it disinte- 
grates society, condemns law, causing repulsion instead of attrac- 
tion, confusion instead of order. It is not possible to have 
society, the social order among men, without bringing them to 
reverence and obey the God whose law is wisdom and love. 
To make order possible, to save the state, to create society, to 
establish law, we enthrone God. 

The Prelude to the Constitution of the United States reads : 
"We, the People of the United States, in order to secure a more 
perfect union, to establish Justice, insure domestic tranquillity, 
provide for the common defense, and to secure the blessings of 



232 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Liberty for ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish 
the following Constitution" — "Order," "Union," "Tranquillity," 
"Defense," hold beneficent meanings only when limited and 
defined by the Law of God. Reverence for Constitutions must 
be assured through reverence for God. 

Fourth : Transcendent spiritual necessities demand and jus- 
tify physical sacrifices. Having wisely and rationally appre- 
hended that spiritual good and attributes are of the highest worth 
to us, we are readily and eagerly giving and exchanging for their 
maintenance all physical possessions, and even life itself. If we 
have repudiated materialism as a theory of human life and 
advantage, and accepted spiritual treasures instead, we are 
proving our practical faith by ofTering all we possess to uphold 
our good confession. Unlimited material sacrifices are being 
poured out by which to maintain, conserve and promote our 
spiritual possessions. Not mere passive assent do we give to the 
proposition that spiritual good is worth more than material, 
but we actively offer all we have in proof. Of our surrender 
of wealth and goods we have already spoken. A vastly greater 
gift asserts a much deeper faith. It is the gift of life and 
suffering. 

Of this supreme personal sacrifice an immortal example is 
found in the martyrdom of Edith Cavell. Serving the cause 
of humanity and right, she refused to count her life dear unto 
her at the dictate of brutal might. With her beautiful life on 
the one hand and the grave on the other, life to be preserved by 
inhumanity on her part, and death to be visited upon her for 
benevolence, she chose the immortal good. And she deserves 
immortal fame. Yet she is only one of her sex of whom un- 
counted thousands have the same estimate of the duties and 
values of life. Our gold is dross compared with such offerings 
of flesh for spirit. 

As this and these are personal sacrifices, so on a national 
scale, we have seen the devotion of the nation of Belgium to 
honor and truth. The choice was deliberate. History can never 
describe the grandeur of that choice. There was the offer of 
protection and material advantage without limit at the hands 
of the German tempter. The alternative, undisguised, was devas- 
tation and death. It was a clear choice between physical riches 
and spiritual wealth. And there was no hesitation, no uncer- 
tainty, no debate. Belgium offered all. Her rulers, her men, 
women and children surrendered every visible and estimable 
treasure so that she might keep an unsullied soul; so that the 
honor, truth, duty of the nation might shine as the stars forever. 
Wonder seizes us whenever we reflect on the exaltation of 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 233 

motive, and the sacrificial exchange which Belgium made of the 
things which are seen and temporal for the things which are not 
seen and eternal. 

As Belgium illustrates this spirit of sacrifice on a national 
scale, no less have the Allies done likewise in the International 
policy which they have adopted. Their choice has been of the 
same nature. Their governments have staked all on the greater 
value of spiritual character and qualities. All that can add 
glory and pleasure to the outer things of a transient world they 
have offered up so as to gain and own forever the spirit, and 
the deserved reputation of honesty and integrity of life. Their 
whole populations, of one and another country, have vied with 
each other in proving their loyalty to morality, humanity, integ- 
rity and liberty. For Right, moral, humane, God-revealed and 
God-sanctioned Right, we offer, and if need be, will give up all 
our physical possessions. 

Such sacrifice is not only made but gladly and quickly made, 
as we are moved by spiritual impulses and guided by reason. 
For the law of sacrifice is a wholly reasonable law. Seeing that 
all things have value, and that some things have a much greater 
value than others, we compare and measure these things and 
choose that which has the greater worth. For this we give the 
lesser. The exchange is made; we are enriched; and the act of 
sacrifice passes into the records of wisdom and goodness. Thus 
we estimate the things of the spirit, and we estimate the things 
of the flesh. The latter are very precious ; the former are much 
more so. We choose the things which we are sure are worthiest 
and most precious. And it is the consciousness of doing this 
which exalts our seeming losses to immortal gains. 

How significant is this exchange when we consider that now, 
for the things of the spirit, human life, many countless lives 
are being given. This very fact assures us of the immortality 
of our personality. If the spiritual attributes of the man are 
worthy of defense through giving up our material goods, much 
more the spiritual personality which these attributes express and 
adorn, is undying. We cannot rationally hold to the theory of a 
merely mortal life, ended at the grave, and then give it for so- 
called spiritual good. If this life is all, if there is no more life 
after it, then it is all and the best I have. Indeed it is so val- 
uable that nothing can be measured against it. When it is gone, 
all is gone, and as for me, I am gone. Were that the fact, then 
I would not on any account or for any cause, surrender my life. 
Not anything nor everything else could be weighed or measured 
against it to warrant the exchange. If I give all for nothing, 
I am a fool. But we all wisely postulate immortal life. After 



834 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

this life, there is more life for us. We end our career on earth, 
but we go on beyond. Only the certainty of this makes reason- 
able our offering of life. 

And so in this great day, taking inventory of our greatest 
treasures, we have come to have a clear view of our spirit and its 
immortal future. This estimate is what Jesus Christ made, — He 
who -brought life and immortality to light. He made the sac- 
rifice of all material things to be the attestation of the greater 
value of the spiritual things which remained, and He gave His 
life because eternal life is better and because He had more life 
than can ever be subject to death. The war is, on the German 
side, the battle of materialism, of might. Necessarily it must be 
stated in physical terms. Their war is immoral, unrighteous, 
unholy, unmerciful, inhuman, without honor, and with plunder 
and merely material gain for its purpose. By their purpose our 
spiritual heritage is assailed. Against their design we array all 
our spiritual forces which carry with them all our physical pos- 
sessions, so that Right may rule, that eternal Right may govern 
the souls and the lives of men and nations, and the essentials 
which are eternal may remain our immortal possessions. 

Fifth : Through world-wide cooperation we are coming to 
world fraternity. With our Allies we are working unitedly and 
drawing closer in a cooperation which is at once a fellowship 
of suffering and of mutual love and help. Hitherto we have 
not realized that we are really near neighbors to them. Frater- 
nity has been more spoken of than felt. But now all indifference 
has been dissipated and our former isolation has ceased to exist. 
We could no longer withhold from them our sympathy or our 
service. Joining with them, we resist tyranny and contend 
against a common foe. Uniting with them in merciful service, 
our sympathies as well as our courage unify us. 

How could real fraternity be more assured than by the 
friendly aid of which the Red Cross Society is the most con- 
spicuous example ? Is there any kind of need which we are not 
eagerly seeking through it to alleviate ? Its emblem, the Cross, is 
the sign of reconciliation of two worlds, heaven and earth; and 
of two continents and all peoples. Others suffer. That is all 
we need to know. And we hasten to them, bearing in our 
hands and in our hearts whatever will alleviate their distress. 

Of kindred character and influence is our policy of "Food 
Conservation" by which, with self-denial, self-control and self- 
sacrifice, we build up the strength of others. Even to this day, 
as many times in years past, when we move against the sale 
and use of alcoholic beverages, some men remonstrate with us 
and ask, "Are you daring to invade our liberties and to tell us 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 235 

what we shall drink? By and by, you will tell us what to 
eat." Quite true. Our government is now welcome at our 
homes and tables as it comes in and tells us what to eat. For 
it not only advises and urges us what to eat but prescribes what 
we shall not eat. Four years ago we should have jeered at the 
possibility of such a course. Now we know that our very 
life as a nation depends on our compliance. And even more 
marvelous is the fact that we are doing this so that what we save 
shall be sent across the sea to feed and strengthen millions whom 
we never saw and never will know. Our most private and per- 
sonal use of food is being governed in the interests of the whole 
world. And we are glad to have it so. "Deny yourself" is as 
truly a government order as it is a command of Christ. It is 
the only rule by which the nations are to be saved. 

The Salvation Army, in its extreme poverty, used to adver- 
tise, "Self-Denial Week." We were wont to smile at their ardor 
and to count its fanaticism. Its purpose was good, but in their 
poverty and manifest need, we wondered why or how they 
could exercise self-denial. Now, we who then smiled are doing 
as they did to save our lives by saving others. It has been told 
that when our soldiers first went to France, they were greeted 
as "The Salvation Army." Such they were and are. We are all 
marching with them. They and we and all who deny them- 
selves for others are the Salvation Army of the World. 

And how remarkable that we are becoming clearly aware that 
salvation comes through self-denial, and wisest self-direction. 
No man is living to himself if he is living usefully or rationally. 
We now regulate our desires and our actions by God's commands 
and by the needs of others, as the national government makes 
them known to us. Our interests affiliated with our Allies 
make our evident obligations. Selfish purposes are shamed and 
fought. Profiteering is forbidden by law; that is, taking selfish 
advantage in the commercial world of the necessities of others 
and enriching ourselves at their expense. From a new angle 
we see that waste and wickedness are inseparable from the 
liquor traffic. We protest on the broadest grounds against food- 
stuffs being used to make ruinous and poisonous drinks. There 
is something to be done with grains which must take precedence 
of any selfish use of them. Our care for our human brothers 
is being emphasized. On it depends our own welfare, insep- 
arable from theirs. We are brothers in spirit and action. We 
suffer and serve in love for one another. And so we come to 
live as men must who live well. The love for our neighbor is 
the goal of our highest victory, the motive and result of self- 
mastery. 



236 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Sixth : The Christian doctrine of human world unity is vin- 
dicated. The word "Christian" I use unhesitatingly because all 
the gains and aims which I hereto have named are Christian, and 
expressions of Christian principles and teaching. Essentially 
spiritual, Christian truth must repudiate mere materialism and 
put in its place the truths of a spiritual world. Likewise Chris- 
tianity dethrones Mammon and makes wealth the servant of 
higher things. It enthrones God and finds in Him the source of 
the laws of life and human order. One of its central doctrines 
is that of self-sacrifice for the good of others. And it leads 
the world in announcing and cultivating the spirit of brother- 
hood in and among men. So likewise it assumes and teaches the 
unity and equality of men of every race and clime as subjects of 
Divine mercy and care. 

In theory and practice this teaching has been always con- 
tested by mankind. Men of one nation or tribe have considered 
themselves superior to their fellow men of other locations and 
characteristics and have usually held a hostile rather than a 
friendly relation to the stranger. 

Assuming human unity, Christ directed a universal propa- 
ganda of teaching and evangelizing among all men. The four 
universals of His final commission to His disciples are thus 
given in the Bible : "All authority hath been given me in heaven 
and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all 
nations baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son 
and the Holy Spirit : teaching them to observe all things what- 
soever I have commanded you : and lo, I am with you all the 
days, even unto the end of the world." This is an announce- 
ment of a world religion, teaching the unity of law, of morals, of 
truth, of humanity, of kindness and help everywhere. 

So, obedient to this broad direction, the followers of Christ 
in every age have gone into all lands and among all peoples 
vindicating world unity, a common humanity and a universal 
duty of man to God and of man to man. Extensive and inclu- 
sive as this conception is, it has by many been opposed, traduced, 
belittled and scorned. Without hesitation, those who understood 
their Lord have persisted in their glorious enterprise. By their 
doctrine of God and their love of humanity they have pro- 
foundly impressed the mind of the as yet unchristian world. 
And so well have they represented and taught the doctrine of 
Christ that, at this time, among other world-wide benefits which 
they admittedly have conferred, is that they have visibly given 
to the leaders of every land of the Orient a lofty conception of 
the Christian spirit and purpose. 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 237 

Naturally the preponderating millions of Asia might have 
assumed that all the peoples of the West from whence these 
missionaries came, were Christian. But they have learned to 
discriminate. And now when nations of the western world who 
might have been expected to be Christians, have assailed the rest 
of mankind in ways so selfish and so wicked as to shock even 
a savage mind, all these oriental nations understand that such 
assailants are not Christians. They also understand that the de- 
fenders of the best things in human life, because they so defend, 
are not to be classed with their assailants, and that on the side 
of Germany are the foes of humanity as on the side of the 
Allies are its friends. The Asiatic nations therefore are the 
friends of the Allies. And while by the vastness of their num- 
bers they might, if hostile, overwhelm the western world, they 
are now its friends, ready to police the world and to preserve 
and defend the things which the missionaries have taught them 
are the best and the most sacred for universal man. 

We owe it to-day to the work of the Christian missionaries 
teaching the nature of God as Father and the privilege of men 
as brothers, that the sympathies and alliances of the Asiatic and 
even the African world are with the Allies. 

The grounds on which Germany seeks to subjugate and 
tyrannize over the human race are totally unchristian. Assum- 
ing with unspeakable conceit that they are superior to all the 
rest of mankind and that they shall be masters while all 
the rest are their slaves, they have not only awakened Europe 
and America to resist them but have shown to the Far East 
as well, their presumption, their savagery and their unfitness to 
rule. 

It remains for the nations of the West to see their duty to 
send hereafter their best representatives to the East to give to 
them our very best treasures, training and culture. Last year 
by dint of great self-denial, the Christians of the North Amer- 
ican Continent spent twenty million dollars, most freely given, 
to carry the best of their possessions, the truth of the Gospel, 
to far lands. Last year the smokers of tobacco in the United 
States spent more than a thousand millions for smokes, fifty 
times as much as the Churches could send to teach and care for 
the heathen world. Suppose that a spirit of self-denial had come 
over those who waste this vast sum and suppose that it were 
diverted to give our very best people and the best truth, un- 
doubtedly the truth of Christianity, to the world — what relation 
would that have to the consolidation, prosperity and peace of 
mankind? And suppose even that our Government as a matter 
of economy, so as to save billions of American money and bil- 



238 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

lions of value of goods, with millions of invaluable lives, should 
hereafter pursue the purpose of uplifting and unifying the 
world of mankind in a wholly kindly, brotherly, unselfish, philan- 
thropic and Christian way. What more wonderful political 
economy could be launched and out of what could spring greater 
universal advantage? 

Seriously and reverently let me say that the foregoing facts 
of life and reason made known to the world and impressed on 
the minds of men, seem to me a rich compensation for our 
defensive war and a call far more impressive than the war cry 
of "Democracy," to furnish a reason and a means of bringing 
to us victory. The form of government is of far less concern 
than its purpose and spirit — and that spirit with its form and 
fruitage, the love of God and love of man, reveal the prizes of 
victory now inciting us to battle. 



THREE: BY DR. TALCOTT WILLIAMS 

Dean, School of Journalism, Columbia University. 

Nothing could have done more to awaken the country than the 
occurrence which took place this week. We think of the men who 
have met death in the waters of the sea which our fathers crossed 
to seek liberty, with the renewed determination that we shall con- 
tinue to final, complete and absolute victory the war on which 
we have entered for the freedom of the world. Those men 
who have given life's last sacrifice are the pledge of the Re- 
public, and while tides move and winds blow, this Republic will 
continue to be the guardian, not only of its own liberties, but 
of the freedom and peace of the world. It is fighting this war 
to secure both. We are doing but what we have done before. 
We fought one war to secure our independence, and we won 
that; we fought another war to secure the liberty of the slave, 
and we won that; and we are fighting this war to secure the 
liberty of humanity, and we shall win that! 

This great democracy is sometimes spoken of as casual in its 
decisions, as passing from phase to phase. There is not in the 
world to-day, and there never has been in history, a marching 
host whose marching orders were so constant and continuous, 
and which, like the men of war in the army which Ezekiel saw, 
turned not when they went; they went every one straight for- 
ward. 

We determined to draw a ring fence around the thirteen colo- 
nies, unite them in a single nation and guarantee peace for the 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 

Continent. It was for this our Fathers called their army the Con- 
tinental army. And we had peace, except for the war brought 
on by slavery, that bitter evil whose seed our fathers planted 
and whose sour grapes their descendants ate, and I see before 
me at least one, Senator Miller, who shared in that great war. 
I remember him in the Assembly at Albany when he could still 
draw you into a corner and tell you of his service as a cavalry- 
man; but you have forgotten his military experience in the 
abundant service which he rendered as a statesman during the 
course of the score of years when he was in the forefront of 
legislative work. 

Having drawn a ring fence around this continent, ninety-five 
years ago, we decided to draw a ring fence of peace around the 
Western Hemisphere, and we did that when we proclaimed the 
Monroe Doctrine. That was our second step; and to-day we 
are proposing that, leading the self-governing nations of the 
world; we will draw a ring fence around the world and allow 
no aggressive warfare within that. 

Exactly as we made small states as safe in their rights, their 
liberties, and their peace, exactly as we decided that we would 
as little permit San Salvador which is a fraction of the size of 
Delaware, to be invaded by a foreign foe as ourselves, so, fol- 
lowing the same policy, unchanged and unalterable, which has 
come down to us from the fathers, we propose that, however 
small the country may be, no country shall ever be great enough 
to do it injustice while a league of self-governing states stands 
to guard the liberty and rights of men and of nations alike. 
That is the great task to which we have set ourselves, and we 
need to look upon this war as no accident brought on by 
aggression. When we decided to be free ourselves, we became 
the enemies of the king business, and we propose now to end the 
king business, once and for all. We propose that never again 
shall it be possible for a man who believes himself ruling by 
divine right to kindle the world in flames, and the reason why 
we propose to do that is because it is as immoral and impious 
for a man to look upon himself as called and born of divine 
right to rule other men and decide their destinies, as it was 
for those who believed in slavery to assert that there were men 
set apart to serve other men and who had no rights which other 
men were bound to respect. Those two heresies are both the 
same heresy. It was as impious and immoral to assert the 
divine right of slavery as it is to-day to assert the divine right 
of kings, and the same tidal forces which enabled the United 
States to sweep slavery off the face of the earth, those same tidal 
forces and the stars in the firmament are fighting for us to-day 



240 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

and will enable us to sweep off the face of the earth the 
other impious and immoral heresy, that any man is set apart by 
birth and divine right to rule his fellow man. 

This is the great task which we have to accomplish. We are 
under the same marching orders, with the same determination, 
with the same resolution, and, thank God, more united than we 
have ever been in our history. If you will turn to the history 
of the Revolution, you will find that at that time there were 
relatively more dissenters than there are to-day, and I doubt 
very much whether a plebiscite of the colonists before the blow 
had come and men knew what was before them, would not have 
decided in favor of that insane German sovereign — not the only 
insane or semi-insane German sovereign in history — who was 
known as George III. He believed in divine right and that 
he could carry out any policy which he chose to undertake. He 
met from the United States his first defeat, and another insane 
German sovereign who has the same views on the subject is 
going to meet exactly the same defeat in the same way, from the 
same land. 

I hardly think we realize, as we look back on the heroic past 
of the Civil War, against what odds the cause of union and free- 
dom was won, won by the party which this Club represents, won 
by the first President that the Republican Party elected. Abra- 
ham Lincoln has come to be the hero, the model, the guide of all 
Americans, without distinction of party. We have almost for- 
gotten that when he was elected, in i860, if you took the total 
vote cast for all the candidates and matched it against his, his 
vote was 600,000 behind the total vote cast, before any State 
had seceded or anybody had left the Union. Taking all the 
States together, his vote of 1,800,000 was 600,000 short of the 
vote which was cast for all the other candidates together. The 
Democrats were on the side of slavery ; the party as a whole was 
pro-slavery ; and there were Americans then who were anxiously 
seeking a rat-hole to disappear into, without saying what they 
believed about slavery, one way or the other. And there are 
people in this country to-day who are seeking anxiously the same 
rat-hole in regard to the principles of this war. 

Now, even in the North, in a vote of about 3,000,000, Abra- 
ham Lincoln had, of all the candidates a majority of about 
260,000. It was heavy in some States; it was light in others. 
California was a State which had an overwhelming Democratic 
vote, but that vote was so divided that under the laws of Cali- 
fornia the electoral vote of that State was cast for Lincoln, 
and I could run through the list of the Northern States and show 
you in how many of them the vote for Abraham Lincoln in 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 241 

i860 was in its total smaller than the total vote of the Demo- 
cratic candidates. 

The election in November, 1862, came nearer to wrecking the 
cause of liberty, of emancipation and of the Union than any 
battle fought by the Confederate armies; and we need to look 
like perils directly in the face now, to make certain that every 
one of us is determined, that whatever else is done, this war 
shall be fought to a victorious end. 

I wonder how many here realize that in the great State of 
Ohio, in November, 1862, when Lincoln had just issued his 
Emancipation Proclamation, when the battle of Antietam had 
driven Lee across the Potomac, and the brief chapter of defeats 
in the summer of 1862 had begun to register the great succession 
of victories which was to end the war at Appomattox, that in 
Ohio, with nineteen Congressional Districts, fourteen out of the 
nineteen elected men on an avowed peace platform, with resolu- 
tions asking in each Congressional district for an armistice, the 
suspension of the war, and peace with the Confederate States. 

In Illinois, a legislature was elected which, in both branches, 
passed peace resolutions, and condemned the administration of 
President Lincoln in his conduct of the war. 

In Connecticut, in New Jersey, in New York — alas, in New 
York, — in Ohio, in Illinois, the State election went in favor of a 
peace platform, Maine in one district electing a peace Democrat 
instead of a fighting Republican. The majorities for the men 
who supported Lincoln and who had been elected in i860 were 
cut down, taking the average of the North, from one-half to one- 
tenth of what they had been in i860. I speak within bounds 
when I say that those elections added at least a year to the war ; 
and of the million lives which the war cost, North and South, 
more than half of them were lost after that election. As nearly 
as I can make out, about 650,000 of the deaths caused by the 
war took place after November, 1862. If every political party 
in the North, without distinction as to its previous record, had 
in 1862 closed up solid behind Victory, the prosecution of the 
War, and the determination that no peace should be considered 
or thought of, no compromise permitted, excepting the emanci- 
pation of the slave, and the sovereignty of the Union from 
the Lakes to the Gulf, the war would have been over from a year 
to a year and a half earlier than it otherwise was. Let me add 
to all these things, that in that winter a mayor of New York City 
was elected by the vote of the men who were the friends of the 
enemies of the Republic. 

I see your faces sober as I speak, with a new sense of the 
responsibility of American citizenship. We drank the toast to 



242 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

the President and the Army and Navy of the United States. I 
think, myself, that we ought no longer to drink a toast to the 
"President of the United States;" we ought to drink the toast 
"To the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the 
United States, and to the Army and Navy which he commands." 
That is the side of the power of the Chief Executive which we 
should think of, and we should put ourselves on record to that 
effect. 

As I have already said, I see you feel a new sense of the 
responsibilities of the Republic at war. We need to remember 
that this nation has never looked upon peace as a thing to have 
unless we were ready to defend it by the sword; and when we 
crowned the Capitol with the figure of Liberty, we put at her 
side the sheathed sword as she looked eastward to see what 
enemies might come. It is that sword which this country drew 
ten months ago, seeing that enemies were staying our passage 
on the seas, which is now consecrated by our dead, and is to 
be glorified by returning legions as they come back with victory 
in their hands. 

We need at a time like this, not only to remember what we 
would wish to have had different, but what has been also actually 
accomplished. It is ten months since war was declared, and we 
have to-day more soldiers — I know I don't betray any secret in 
saying this, because most of us won't be able to remember the 
figures — but we have to-day more soldiers in France than Great 
Britain had in May, 191 5, ten months after the opening of the 
war in August, 1914, with an army ten-fold as large as ours at 
our entrance on this war ; if you include all forms of their army 
and all forms of ours, with an army then, in 1899, five-fold as 
large as ours, we have at the end of ten months more men in 
France than Great Britain was able to put into South Africa for 
the Boer War in ten months. I rejoice to say that the army of 
the United States is to-day, ten months after we entered, occupy- 
ing within a trifle as many miles of that red gash which is cut 
across the face of Europe by the trenches of the Imperial Ger- 
man Government, as were occupied by the British in ten months. 
This speaks much for the Republic, and most of all for the 
fashion in which the Party which was once opposed to President 
Wilson while he was a candidate and will probably always be op- 
posed to him as a candidate, rallied behind him when the Provi- 
dence of God made him the Commander-in-Chief of the Army 
and Navy of the United States. 

Never in the history of representative government, never in 
the annals of representative institutions, has there been an equal 
instance of the throwing aside of all past party affiliations and a 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR MS 

like readiness on the part of every man to stand behind the man 
who is waging the battle of civilization. If it had not been for 
that, if the Republic in this day had been as divided in these 
matters as it was between 1776 and 1784, and between 1861 
and 1865, in all human prospect and possibility, the Imperial 
German Army would be to-day in Paris ; for what has kept it out 
of Paris has been the new strength which was given to the 
armies of the Allies in France by the certainty that overwhelming 
aid was to come across the sea. 

There needs must be an election next November. We have 
to stand by the principles which we believe are necessary to this 
government; but I have recited these facts before a body of 
men, even on an inclement day like this, singularly representative 
of the best political thought of this city, because we need to be 
guided by the example of the past, and to be certain that our 
elections be so conducted that there shall be no flicker of en- 
couragement the "Tuesday after the first Monday" of next 
November among the "Predatory Potsdam Gang!" Whatever 
else we do, we want to be certain that none of those men will be 
elected whose election gives encouragemnt to the enemies of the 
Republic. 

We have another duty to discharge, a duty as great as that 
of winning the war, which is the indispensable necessity of the 
future. Who does not realize that as Belgium kept the gate for 
France, and as France kept the gate for England, and as England 
is to-day, with France, Italy and Belgium, keeping the gate for 
the American Republic, that this is only to throw the gate open, 
that through it victorious legions may pass, with the future of the 
world assured? 

And I wish to say, simply in passing, that for years it has 
been part of my duty to write about military affairs and to study 
the military situation ; that this war I am not only following day 
by day, but that I have used every possible means to acquaint 
myself with it, because I lecture upon it as part of my du- 
ties in training journalists, and I am glad to say that of 
the men who have registered in the School of Journalism since 
it was opened in October, 1912, to-day thirty per cent, are 
in khaki, and a dozen of them are in the trenches at this present 
moment. 

Now, taking that view, there never was a time when the 
victory of the Allies was so certain as it is to-day. I was asked 
the other day when the war would end, and I tell you now 
what I said then, that this war will end when the American 
people has done its complete duty. These two things are abso- 
lutely certain ; both that the American people will do its complete 



244 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

duty, and that the war will be over when it has done its com- 
plete duty. It may take time ; it will take time ; but done both 
will be. 

I wonder if you realize that this year, no matter if the sub- 
marine sinkings exceed the tonnage of any past year, December 
will find more tonnage afloat than was afloat in January of this 
year? I wonder if you realize that in 1919, by the end of the 
year, the tonnage at the command of the Allies will be three mil- 
lion tons ahead, though the submarines were to continue to 
destroy them as fast as they have in the past; and that by 1920, 
taking the way tonnage is being planned and built, it will be 
possible for the United States to do as it pleases, to put four 
million men in France, added to the two million that will be 
there, and if we put eleven million men in France, we shall have 
only equalled the number of men which eighteen millions in the 
North put in the battle line between 1861 and 1865. The sacri- 
fice of that day must be the measure of our devotion to-day to the 
Republic. 

Since victory is certain, I want to ask you to consider our 
responsibility with regard to the fruits of victory. Victory is 
certain, but whether the fruits of victory are won and lasting 
depends on the American people and depends more than any 
other group of men upon those who represent what the men who 
are within this room represent, the sober, clear, loyal, thinking 
of the Republican Party; for the great question which faces the 
Allies, our allies in Europe to-day, in considering the future, is : 
"How far, after the war is won, the United States will dis- 
charge its responsibilities?" 

I will put concretely before you a fact which is simmering 
under the surface of affairs. The Allies, our allies, have con- 
quered already about one-fourth of the Ottoman Empire. It is 
certain that after victory comes, the fate of the Ottoman Empire 
will be in the hands of the Peace Conference, and at that Peace 
Conference the United States will be, as the United States has 
been since it entered the war, the leader of the thought, prin- 
ciple and action of the allied forces of freedom. Now, what is 
being proposed on the other side and talked about, but which 
is not yet in the newspapers on either side of the water, is this : 
Here is the Ottoman Empire, with no one race or faith in a 
majority, except that several of the races are Mohammedan and 
Mohammedan rule has made such a mess of the business of gov- 
ernment, as the million men, women and children slaughtered in 
massacre for two years past show, that it is not possible to put 
Mohammedans back in power. There is no other element in the 
Ottoman Empire which can take charge of the government. If 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 245 

it is put in the hands of any one of the European powers, the mo- 
ment peace has come and old jealousies revive, every other Euro- 
pean power will begin to suspect everything that that country 
does. If you divide the Ottoman Empire, every one of the new 
frontiers will offer a new chance for aggression and you will in- 
crease the possibility of war, and war will finally be made certain 
as it has been by the division of the Balkan Peninsula, into four 
states which have shown themselves unable to continue self-gov- 
ernment, while under the necessity of arming against constant 
assault from without and ambition from within. 

Now, it would be possible, if the American people chose to 
assume the responsibility, to do for the Ottoman Empire exactly 
what we have done for the Philippines, to put in there a small 
force to organize a constabulary officered by Americans, but 
made up of the various races of the Ottoman Empire, to conduct 
its affairs with perfect justice and impartiality, though there 
would be a period in which outlawry, which is rife over parts of 
the Ottoman Empire, would have to be suppressed. And I 
want to say that pretty nearly all the flub-dub and camouflage 
we heard about the fight for freedom in the Philippines between 
1898 and 1902 was nearly all the pillage and plunder of village 
bandits, trying to preserve the oppression and personal profit 
permitted under Spanish rule. 

In another year, it will be a hundred years since the Amer- 
ican missionary first appeared in the Ottoman Empire. Within 
that time he has established all the higher education that the 
Ottoman Empire has. He has planted hospitals in nearly all 
the large cities but one; he has not only preached the Gospel, 
but he has virtually raised the educational standards of the 
Empire, not only for the men and women he was brought into 
the churches he has founded, but for nearly all the higher 
education of the Ottoman Empire too. For a century, we and 
we alone of all lands have been known alone for works of heal- 
ing, of mercy, of charity and of teaching. 

There is not a race in Turkey — and I was myself born in 
Turkey, lived there the first sixteen years of my life, speak one of 
the languages that are spoken there, and am meeting people from 
the Ottoman Empire every day of my life — which would not 
prefer a protectorate by this country if the United States were 
willing to assume a responsibility of that sort. After a year or 
two in which peace was being restored, which would never re- 
quire anything like the force which we had to put in the Philip- 
pines, there would not be enough news out of the Ottoman 
Empire in ten years to give a first page display once a year 
in any newspaper in this city. All sides of the Ottoman Empire 



246 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

and every European people would rather have us there than any 
one else, though you were to run through the whole catechism of 
the European situation. Whether the call for this responsibility 
will come or not, I do not know; but if it does come, will the 
American people, having put their hands to the plow which 
they are going to drive through the furrow until the seeds of 
liberty have been sown in every country in the world, will our 
people be willing to stay and reap the harvest of assured liberty, 
by assuming new responsibilities for a territory like the Ottoman 
Empire, not for rule or ambition, but solely training it for liberty 
and self-government? 

In regard to its demand for defense that would be guaran- 
teed by our treaties in a League to Enforce Peace; but the 
responsibilities of order and the growth of liberty would be ours 
if the Republic were willing. Why are we thus trusted? I 
wonder if you realize that never before in history did it happen 
that a principality, a region as fertile, as full of wealth as 
Cuba, was conquered, lay in the grasp and power of a great 
nation, and then was turned over to its own people to work 
out their own destiny? The Declaration of Independence was 
not a greater act than this free surrender of one of the great 
prizes of conquest. That is one of the reasons why this country, 
never selfish, always willing to make sacrifices, has in its record 
in Cuba, a capital asset in the confidence of the world, which 
no nation has ever had in all the annals of war or peace. Now, 
will the Republic be able, will you be willing, to lay that asset 
on the altar of freedom, to do our part to prevent wars over 
these pieces of coveted territory? If it is, then the problems of 
Asia will be solved. First for the Ottoman Empire, and then for 
Persia, and finally for China itself, these all will emerge as self- 
governing, liberty-loving lands. 

Abroad, while the better public opinion of the allied peoples 
favor some such policy — opposed though it is sure to be by 
national ambition, public policy and those in England, France 
and Italy already holding concessions and conducting enter- 
prises in the Ottoman, the proposal is still mere suggestion be- 
cause no one believes that when the war is won, the American 
people will put its soul and strength, its men and its resources 
behind any far-sighted policy for the world's peace and the pro- 
tection of lands that can be exploited from the spoils. Take 
the Monroe Doctrine; it was over forty years, from the time 
President Monroe launched the doctrine, before Congress backed 
it in a resolution ordering Emperor Maximilian out of Mexico 
and warning Napoleon III that the French troops that were 
supporting him should leave forthwith. During all that forty-two 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 2*7 

years, from 1823 to 1865, Congress took no action on the Monroe 
Doctrine because it was perfectly well understood that if the 
issue came to a vote, though every President from Monroe to 
Lincoln had supported the national policy of the former Con- 
gressmen, Senators and Representatives, both, would not risk 
their seats on a vote for an aggressive national policy. 

Even when the Government at Washington sent General 
Sheridan and 50,000 men to the Rio Grande our active aid con- 
sisted in leaving rifles and cartridges, batteries and ammunition, 
where the forces of Juarez, driven to the farthest corner of 
Mexico, could find them. General Sheridan himself reported 
that a warehouse full of arms "guarded by a sergeant had been 
seized and carried off on the Rio Grande." From the fall of 
Maximilian, solely due to our action to 1868, our Government 
declined to assume all the responsibilities that were thrust upon 
it opening the door to the salvation of Latin-America. These 
refusals to act when the call came are not familiar because our 
public opinion and our newspapers were opposed to more than 
a negative support of the Monroe Doctrine. There are unwritten 
and not creditable chapters in our diplomacy known only to the 
State Department and to newspaper men like myself who be- 
lieved that the United States ought to meet permanent and 
positive duties and obligations in the hemisphere it guarded and 
not content itself with simply hanging out on the Atlantic a 
sign of "No Trespassing," which could be read across the 
ocean in the glare of our naval searchlights, when we had any 
afloat. 

I first knew what Spanish rule meant, when, as a reporter on 
the New York "World" I wrote up the New York end of the 
Virginias affair in 1873. I learned as correspondent at Wash- 
ington first for the "World," then for the New York "Sun," and 
later for the Philadelphia "Press," in October, 1873. 

When the Virginius was seized and Captain Frye, a gallant 
Confederate officer, and 48 Americans were shot against the wall 
of a slaughter house at Santiago, we could have freed Cuba., 
and again in 1878 the opportunity was presented to us, and we 
hesitated, and twenty needless years of cruel wrong passed before 
we acted. That great man, Secretary Blaine — alas, that that 
should be the highest title that I can give him before you — Sec- 
retary Blaine (I speak here of personal knowledge) showed me 
the dispatch, instructions and agreement which had been reached 
in 1881 with Argentine and Brazil. They agreed to mobilize 
their forces to check Chili's ruthless conquest. We were to send 
a fleet off the Western coast of South America. The full proposi- 
tion was that Chili, which had seized two Peruvian provinces 



248 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

and proposed to take them, in defiance of the unbroken usage 
and common law of South American States that no territory 
should be transferred breaking old boundary, was to be forced 
to submit to the general demand that there should be an arbitra- 
tion as to the right of that nation to have the Nitrate of Tarapaca, 
Tacna, Arica and Bolivian territory, shutting that Republic from 
the sea. 

Those territories gave sixty per cent, of their exports of niter 
to Germany in the five years before this war, and this was one of 
the most important preparations that Germany made. It had been 
absorbing between 25 and 30 per cent, of the production of niter, 
and just before 1912 it took in 60 per cent., accumulating the 
stock of niter on which it was able to carry on its manufacture 
of explosives, until it discovered a cheap way of taking niter out 
of the air. If the action Blaine proposed had been taken, we 
would not have to-day Chili neutral in a contest where neutrality 
is perfidy to liberty, and ought never to be allowed on the Western 
Hemisphere. 

Again, in 1881, we could have freed Cuba, for Cuba was or- 
ganized for revolt, and all that was necessary was to prevent 
the Spanish troops from being reinforced to free Cuba and we 
waited until 1898, with our ports yearly ravaged with yellow 
fever. Blaine again urged action ; the country was indifferent 
and President Arthur did not feel justified in acting. 

We, first of all nations, recognized the Congo Free State 
in 1885, and when we had done that we could and should have 
stopped Leopold, in whose exploiting companies Germans of 
high place held shares which paid one hundred per cent, divi- 
dends at the cost of the death of 6,000,000 blacks, slain to pay 
those blood-stained profits — Leopold was a "financier" on the 
Berlin plan. Committed, for over sixty years, to a moral protec- 
torate of the west coast of Africa, we could have used our moral 
power and said to Leopold that butchery in a new country 
which we had recognized must stop and if it continued we would 
put our fleet off the West Coast of Africa and ended the thing 
by blockading the ports of that artificial creation, the Congo 
Free State. 

In 1895-96, after one hundred thousand Armenians were mas- 
sacred and two of our colleges had been burned down, if we 
had thrown our moral force into the struggle, we could have 
enabled France, England and Italy to have enforced the Treaty 
of Berlin, when the Imperial German Government, as its first 
step towards the present war, protected the worst miscreant in 
history, who has ever sat on a throne, Abdul Hamid. 

We gave over in 1898 the Caroline Islands to Germany, be- 



THE MORAL ISSUES OF THE WAR 249 

cause we wanted to placate Germany after she sent a fleet to 
seize the Philippines. What is the result ? Japan occupies them 
to-day because at that moment we did not assert ourselves. 

We had owned the Samoan Islands under a treaty which Grant 
negotiated but which the Senate refused to ratify and through 
all the thirty years our people have been bickering over our 
taking the Samoan Islands. What is the result? In 1900 we 
turned one of them over to Germany. We gave Samoa to Ger- 
many. The Kaiser paid a visit to his grandmother, Queen Vic- 
toria, in 1900, to show he would not interfere in the Boer War, 
and Queen Victoria's government gave us changes in the Clayton- 
Bulwer treaty over the head of Canada. The Kaiser gave away 
the Boers, England gave away Canada, and we gave away an 
island in Samoa. We all gave away what did not belong to 
us, in order to bring on the peace which brought on the present 
war! 

In San Domingo and Haiti we did what we ought to have 
done. An American President took the matter into his own 
hands in the Venezuelan question. You will all remember the 
fashion in which a flat declaration was made by President Cleve- 
land to England : "You can't adjust a boundary on the Western 
Hemisphere without arbitration. If you attempt to do it, we 
shall go to war." Business elements protested that had never 
protested before and it was clear that this country had a strong 
opposing sentiment. 

At Algeciras, when the Morocco question came up in 1906, 
what took place? We instructed out representative, a most able 
diplomatist, Mr. Henry White, and he adjusted a fair arrange- 
ment with reference to Morocco. The arrangement dropped to 
pieces because, after it was done, we were unwilling to step in and 
enforce that arrangement. If that had been done, it would not 
have been possible for Germany to go on harrying France until 
this war came, because it would have been perfectly clear that 
the great Republic of the West was ready to use its power in 
favor of the right, wherever it was threatened. 

Once we did do this. The German fleet was on its way to 
seize a port in Venezuela, when President Roosevelt gave the 
Kaiser forty-eight hours to change his mind, and it didn't take him 
forty-eight hours. If the Kaiser had known what this people 
was ready to do, he would not have believed the lies of the 
German newspapers subsidized in the United States — paid in 
order that the German Government might be able to inform itself 
about the opinion of the United States. After Germany had 
made that costly bargain, its Government decided that our 
German-American citizens, who have proved loyal to the core, 



250 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

would break faith with the Republic to which they had sworn 
allegiance. 

I lay these matters before you. I ask you to think of these 
two things : the necessity that we shall so conduct ourselves that 
no enemy of the Republic shall receive any encouragement from 
any act or vote of ours next November; and the second, that 
we shall so educate our fellow-citizens, that when destiny again 
calls they will answer the call to duty of the Republic, so that 
having set victorious feet on foreign shores and vindicated the 
liberty and preserved the civilization of the world, we shall be 
willing to enter a league to enforce peace, to preserve peace and 
these liberties; and, that since we are the one unselfish power 
of the world, we should be willing unselfishly to take the guard- 
ianship of weak nations which have been the cause of woes 
innumerable, and have brought on this war, because the United 
States is the only country which all countries trust. 



SEVENTH DISCUSSION 

FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH, I918 
UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 

ONE: MR. JAMES S. LEHMAIER'S INTRODUCTION OF 
MLLE. SILVERCRUYS. 

It is just one year ago this month that the Secretary of State, 
at the direction of the President of the United States, handed his 
passports to the Imperial German Ambassador at Washington. 
That action was taken only after the most careful and deliberate 
consideration. For two years and a half, this great neutral 
nation of America had endured a series of outrages, intrigues, 
arson and murder at the hands of Germany and her diplomatic 
agents in this country, who disregarded the obligations due to 
the hospitality which we had extended to them — a series of 
outrages such as no nation having the power to resist had ever 
endured at the hands of another. 

Beyond that, the German Government had offered to Mexico 
and to Japan as bribes to join it in war upon this country, 
portions of our own free domain. It was this accumulated aggre- 
gation of outrages and insults that finally forced this peace- 
loving country into the attitude of a belligerent. Almost unani- 
mously the people of the United States, from the very outset of 
the world war, although the Government was formally neutral, 
never wavered for a moment in their conviction that the cause 
of the Allies was just and righteous. 

I speak as one of a number of men in this room whose sons 
are at the front, when I say that we re-echo the sentiment ex- 
pressed by Professor Hart here two weeks ago, that, infinitely 
precious as it would be to have our sons return to us, there is a 
greater stake at issue in this war than even the lives of our own 
sons. Thank God, the spirit that animates the men and women 
of America is that of the Roman matron who, when sending her 
son to battle, said, "Return with your shield, or on it." 

We are grateful to the brave and courageous soldiers and 
sailors of France, to the brave and determined and liberty-loving 
soldiers and sailors of Great Britain, who, for three years and a 
half, have stood between us and the aggression of German autoc- 
racy; but more than that, in a higher sense than that, we are 

253 



254 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

under everlasting obligation to that little Belgian army which, 
during those fourteen fateful days in August, 19 14, withstood 
the legions of Germany and made it possible for Great Britain 
and France to mobilize their forces so that the Battle of the 
Marne marked the highest tide that German aggression has 
reached or will ever reach. 

We recall, as the world will always recall, the magnificent fig- 
ures of that Spartan band that stood and held the Pass at Ther- 
mopylae ; our admiration has ever been challenged by the bravery 
of the Six Hundred who rode into the very jaws of Hell at 
Balaklava; but as long as valor and chivalry and bravery and 
courage are esteemed cardinal virtues, that little army of the 
truly royal King Albert of Belgium will always be regarded as 
the greatest champions of freedom and saviours of democracy. 

Not content with devastating the beautiful plains of Flanders, 
not content with ruling with autocratic and despotic hand the 
population of Belgium, the non-combatants of that little country 
have been subjected to murder, outrage, rape and deportation 
such as have never before been visited on a subjugated people. 
When the history of these years comes to be written, the names 
of Attila and Genghis Khan will be regarded as those of gentle 
and kindly rulers as compared with that of the present German 
Kaiser. 

One figure stands out beside that of King Albert, that of that 
priest, that great prelate who with simple dignity, has fostered and 
sustained his people and his countrymen in their trials, the figure 
of Cardinal Mercier. 

You will hear this afternoon from a young girl still in her 
teens, but made a woman by what she has herself experienced 
and seen in her own country, the story of the German invasion 
of Belgium. You will hear in simple, photographic language, the 
plain, unvarnished story of Germany's shame, and as you hear 
it, I am sure that you will feel, as all Americans must feel, that 
this war can never cease, must never end, until Belgium has not 
only been evacuated and restored, but adequately compensated. 
When Belgium, Serbia, Rumania and France have been re- 
deemed and compensated, when Alsace and Lorraine, wickedly 
wrested from France in 1871, are returned, when Russia is freed 
from strangulation and every section of that vast dominion is 
liberated from its political and economic thraldom to Germany; 
then, and not until then, can American freemen stand erect. 

It is my very great, my very deep pleasure, to introduce 
to you a young lady who comes from that beloved country 
of Belgium, herself the daughter of the Chief Justice of 
that brave little country, who will tell you the plain and simple 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 255 

tale of what Belgians have endured under German rule. 



TWO: BY MADEMOISELLE SUZANNE SILVERCRUYS 

Daughter of the Chief Justice of Belgium 

When the war broke out, I was staying with my parents in 
our country home which is about twenty miles from the Fortress 
of Liege and very near the Dutch frontier. Even when our men 
were called away, even when our horses and machines were 
taken away by the Government, even when the ultimatum of the 
Kaiser was sent to our King, even then we could not believe, we 
would not believe, that the Germans would really violate our 
neutrality. 

But on the fourth of August, in the afternoon, I was playing 
outside with some spaniel dogs, when I heard the first gun-shots. 
I did not know what it was, never having heard any guns before ; 
so I went inside the house to call my father ; but by that time it 
had stopped, so we went inside the house for dinner. After din- 
ner, we walked to a nearby town and when we were there at that 
little town, we heard very clearly the gun-shots. It was so clear 
that you could tell the difference between the German guns and 
the Belgian guns. The women were running wildly all over that 
little city — they were crying and screaming. They came to my 
father and asked him what it was. He said, "The Germans have 
violated our neutrality ; what you hear is the voice of the country 
calling for defense." And we walked home, over that lonely 
road, under the moonlight. The stars were shining and every- 
thing seemed so peaceful, that we could not believe that the coun- 
try was at war, if it had not been for the roaring of the guns 
going all the time. As we entered the house and opened the 
door, we heard moaning. It was my mother in despair, because 
my brother, the only son in the family, was in the first regiment 
who met the Germans at Liege. That morning we received a 
card from him, in which he said, "Our regiment has been directed 
towards the fortress of Liege, but I don't think the Germans 
will come after all ; it is only bluff." 

But that night, at the open window, we listened to the guns, 
and every gun-shot was stabbing every one of us in the heart, 
because we knew every gun-shot was killing one of our boys, 
one of those little Belgian boys holding the Germans there at 
Liege, and they held them for eight days. 

Next morning we tried to escape. My father realized he had 
to be back at the Capital. We went to the station and found the 



256 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

last train had left. The railroad line was cut up by the Uhlans. 
That night we tried to find our horses and wagons to load up 
during the night. There were none in the whole country round. 
At four o'clock in the morning, a man ran in from town and 
told us there was a street car leaving, and we tried to leave that 
way. I very foolishly said, ''We must take with us our spaniel 
dogs." We traveled in street cars from four o'clock in the morn- 
ing until twelve, traveling from village to village, until at twelve 
o'clock we got into the place where the Belgian soldiers used to be 
trained during the summer generally. As we got there we saw 
boards and stones in the middle of the street, and they hollered 
to us, "Run away, because the Germans are coming and they 
will shoot." We ran into the station. A man ran in and told us 
the last train was pulling in, that the Uhlans were about two 
hundred yards from there. 

We finally got to Louvain at five o'clock in the afternoon. 
When we got there the King was at Louvain and fresh troops 
were going away to the front. We finally got a train, a train full 
of refugees. People were there with all their belongings in a 
sheet, carrying calves, cats, dogs, bird-cages, everything imagina- 
ble. We finally got to Brussels, and naturally the dogs were lost. 
Daddy tried to find them, and mother and I sat on a station bench. 
And suddenly I saw all the people rushing toward something. 
I stood up and saw stretchers and I realized that those were the 
first wounded brought into Brussels, and I knew if my mother saw 
she would not be able to stand it; so I told her I was hungry 
and we went to the restaurant, and while she was ordering some- 
thing I went out and made my way through the crowds till I 
reached the wounded soldiers. I bent over each of the wounded, 
hoping to find my brother there, because I knew if he was 
wounded her, he would not be lying among the dead at Liege. 

There they were, lying there, those little heroes of Belgium, 
full of mud and blood, and one of those men I shall remember as 
long as I live. As I was looking, the blood was dripping from 
the side of his head. He was from the Ninth Regiment, and 
just as I was bending over him, the young recruits were going 
away to the front, singing their national anthem and carrying 
our national flag. And this man heard the song that he knew 
and loved and he tried to get up and salute the flag, but he could 
not. And they passed and they passed and they passed. And 
then some of them came who were only wounded in the arm or 
the leg, and I said to one of them, "Do you know anything about 
soldier Silvercruys ?" And he told me, "I don't know anything, 
but half of us are killed;" and I went back to mother. Soon 
the trunks and the dogs were found, and we went on in the city. 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 257 

You could hardly make your way through the crowds. Every- 
body was on the streets, just like a city in revolution. People 
were singing the national anthem of Belgium everywhere, and 
when you looked up, instead of seeing the sky, you would only 
see the three colors of the Belgian flag hanging at every win- 
dow. 

That night in my little room I could not go to sleep. I prayed 
all night. I wanted to do something for the war, something for 
the boys ; I wanted to do my bit, or rather, I wanted to do my 
best; and the next morning I told my father I wanted to do 
something to help Belgium. So I went to see a very good girl 
friend of mine who is twenty-two years old, and we went to the 
hospital which has been made at the Palace of Justice. You see, 
in Belgium, there were no trained nurses ever, only Sisters of 
Charity. So when the war broke out, the ladies and girls in 
Belgium volunteered to do all they could and the best they could 
for the wounded. 

I thought I would be accepted as a nurse, but when I went 
to the Superintendent of the Hospital the gentleman said, "What 
do you want?" I said, "I wish to be a nurse." "How old are 
you ?" I said, "About sixteen." And he said, "What can a girl 
of sixteen do? It is perfectly silly; you can't enlist as a nurse, 
only sixteen years old." I said to him, "Can't you think of some- 
thing I can do ?" And he said, "Well, if you want to go into the 
kitchen and peel potatoes and onions and wash dishes, you can do 
that." I said to him, "If that is my bit, I am glad to do it." So 
I went to the kitchen and peeled potatoes and onions and washed 
dishes for two days, and I was the happiest girl on the face of this 
earth. In the beginning of the third day I heard the ladies in 
charge of our store-room in the hospital. They have to have a 
store-room. They had a fuss and they all left! So this girl 
friend and I, we went upstairs to the store-room and took charge 
for two days, from eight o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock 
at night. At the beginning of the third day I went to the 
Superintendent of the Red Cross. When I went to the door, he 
said, "Young lady, you are awfully young, but we will try to give 
you training in one of our wards;" and from that time on I 
worked in ward No. 2 at tfre Palace of Justice. I nursed first 
the Belgian wounded and then the German wounded for three 
months; but during that month, on the 15th of the month, I 
went to Louvain where my sister lived. My brother-in-law was 
Professor of the University of Louvain. I went there to see my 
brother who had escaped, and just to tell you how cheerful those 
Belgian boys were, I will tell you what my brother said to me 
when I met him: "Hello, little sister, we had fried chicken last 



858 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

night, and I was able to sleep in a bed and wash and shave, the 
first time for fifteen days." He came home with us, and I never 
saw anybody eat the way he did. He ate for two hours straight. 
We looked at him, and at one another, and finally he said, "Now 
I am all right for eight days/' Those boys had come back from 
Liege; they had seen the fight there, but they were still full of 
jokes. That is the way with our Belgian people. 

One of the most pathetic things that I have heard my brother 
told me. He told me that he went to Liege and that the first 
night there, as they were marching up the hill — the Germans 
were at the top and they were to take the hill back — my brother 
said, "We marched in the moonlight. We walked in the road, and 
I was walking in the back of the regiment with my chum when 
a bullet came, a single bullet, and it killed him. I ran on him and 
shook him and called him, but the officer said, 'Come on; you 
will see some others later on.' After that I was thirsty for blood," 
said my brother. 

Then, after the siege of Louvain, one day as he was coming 
on the road, he met the father and mother of that boy, and 
they looked all over and then they saw my brother, and the 
mother, smiling, came up to him, saying, "Do you know where 
my son is?" My brother said, "I wanted the earth to open 
under my feet to let me go in and disappear;" and, with that 
mother looking up into his eyes, my brother said, "Oh, I think 
he has been wounded ; yes, he has been wounded ; I think he has 
been wounded seriously and he was not able to follow, so he was 
kept in Liege." And the mother was looking in my eyes, trying 
to read them. She had in her hands packages that she had 
brought to her son, and then she said, "As long as he is not here, 
here are some packages for you — all I have brought." And then, 
just to tell you how she felt, she took off the papers which were 
around those packages and carried the packages to a window sill, 
and then she just plaited that paper and her hands were going 
like a machine all the time. Her whole body was going like a 
machine and her husband had to take her away. Only a few days 
after, she was notified of her son's death. 

I saw those boys in Louvain and talked with them. Some of 
them told me they were grabbed away from their mother at 
the moment she was dying. 

In a few days after, as I was home for luncheon, I heard 
the bell ring and I looked and then I saw my sister with her 
husband and her three little children. This was her greeting: 
"The Germans are in Louvain. They will be here to-morrow 
morning." We could not believe it; we would not. The next 
morning we were notified of the Germans' coming. Our beloved 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 259 

Mayor, Mr. Max, at twelve o'clock went to meet the Germans 
outside of town. The City of Brussels had to pay the sum of 
one and one-half million francs, and it had to be in the City Hall 
within twenty-four hours. I call the Germans the barbarians of 
the twentieth century. 

Those people have a. wonderful organization; — that cannot 
be denied; — their spy service is so complete, and they know the 
names of all the important people in the city, the names of all 
the public buildings, and all the hospitals; and a small detach- 
ment of soldiers takes everything, all the public buildings. We 
were in a hospital, and were a public building, so they did not 
forget us! They came in and requested our services, to nurse 
the German wounded. When the Germans "request" you to do a 
thing, it means that you are obliged to do the thing under penalty 
of death or whatever they will invent at the time. 

We were given a pass to go in and out of the hospital, and 
every time I clenched my fists at having to go between those 
Huns. 

Nobody was on the streets that did not have to be on the 
streets. Every blind and shade were closed, and you would 
have thought every house deserted if it had not been for the 
living Belgian flag still hanging there. Naturally, we were "re- 
quested" to take our flag down ; but we Belgian people were not 
going to take our flag down. They could take it by force if 
they wanted to ; we were not beaten ; we are not beaten ; we never 
will be beaten ! 

For two days and two nights a gray stream of Germans passed 
through Brussels with their big 42-guns, marching to the North of 
France. At that time our troops were confined in the fortress 
of Antwerp. A few days after, at nine o'clock at night, we saw 
the sky all red at the side of Louvain ; it looked like a big fire ; 
it could not have been the sunset at nine o'clock at night. The 
next morning the refugees told us the whole city was on fire; 
and then an old friend of ours came to tell us of some of the 
atrocities of Louvain, which I knew of because I have seen the 
people themselves. If somebody comes to me and says, "I have 
a friend who has a friend who has another friend who knew 
somebody who knew somebody else, etc.," that doesn't work with 
me at all. I want first-hand information. These girls were very 
good friends of mine. Their father was known in Louvain as 
"old M. Lupres." One of his sons was a first lieutenant in the 
Belgian Army and the youngest was a lad sixteen years old. 

The Germans got into Louvain, and for eight days stayed in 
every home, ate their meals, and as a sign of their gratitude, this 
is what happened on the eighth day. These girls were at home 



260 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

at night, and the German soldiers came to them and said, "Get 
right out of this house." They put them right on the street, all 
the women on one side of the street and all the men on the 
other. They said, "Kneel down." They all knelt down, and 
then, right over their heads went the machine guns. One of these 
girls said she saw that her father was too old to kneel, so she 
went over on the other side of the street to help him. The 
soldiers said to her, "Go back." So she went back, and after a 
while the Germans said, "You all turn one side, and if one of 
you dares look, she will be shot." And then they went to shoot- 
ing, and after three-quarters of an hour, when they were allowed 
to turn, the men had left, but there on the street were lying the 
bodies of a few of them. They were not even allowed to go and 
look to see if it was one of their own lying dead. To make it 
more cruel, they had turned the bodies face down on the 
ground. The city was set on fire. These two girls got to a 
wind-mill outside the city. They knocked at the door. A low 
voice said, "Come in." When they went inside, they saw an 
old man lying on the floor and crying. They said to him, "We 
have been chased from Louvain. The city is on fire, set on fire 
by the Germans." His answer was, "Oh, the Germans just 
passed here and killed my son." The girls stayed all night there, 
came to Brussels and came to me. They cried with me there in 
Brussels, not knowing where their father and little brother were. 
After a while my father went to von Bissing and asked him 
where the old man and the little boy were. Von Bissing said it 
was none of his business. After a long while it was known that 
this gentleman and his little son were in a civilian prison camp 
in Germany. After six months he was sent back to Belgium and 
I went to see him. This little boy who had always been full of 
fun before the war, was shaking like a leaf. I said to his sister, 
"What is the matter with him?" And she said, "He has been 
this way ever since he came back. Every time the bell rings, he 
thinks it is a German gun, or the Germans coming to take him 
back to Germany." 

I saw old M. Lupres. He said, "I beg your pardon, 
but I can't stand up any more, but I am so glad to see you." He 
said, "We had to eat the skins of potatoes, and go with a little 
bowl to get our soup, and if I could not go fast enough they 
would hit me. We were all put in the trains, waiting in the 
station. Those that could not get in were shot. I saw lots of 
young men shot by the Germans because there was no more 
place on the train." They were all standing in the cars. They 
traveled four days without being able to move in that train. If 
one of them dared to step out of the train he was shot. They 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 261 

slept against one another, and the only thing that was done for 
them was that a pail of water was passed around for those men to 
drink. The torture of those four days is not imaginable. Nothing 
could — no words could tell the torture of those four days. When 
they got into Germany the women just cried and screamed and 
threw all sorts of things at them. "But here I am," he finished. 
And I told him, "I am awfully glad to see you, now it is all over, 
and glad that you are back with your daughters and with us who 
love you." But a week after, he died. 

The Germans send them back when they know there is no 
more hope for them to live. One of our biggest men in Belgium 
was sent to Germany. He was sent back to Brussels. Three 
days after he got back he died. 

Another instance was that of a well-known professor at the 
University at Louvain. He was an old gentleman and his son 
was also a professor in the University of Louvain. The old 
gentleman was dying of pneumonia. On the eighth day the 
Germans came into the house and said, "Get right out or we 
will set the house on fire." The young son said, "Don't you 
see that my father is dying? Let him die in peace, and do 
what you want with the house afterward." As he was able to 
speak German, the son was able to get back. When he came 
there, what did he see but his old father dead on a mattress in 
the middle of the street, and his old mother kneeling there in 
the middle of the street, and the house itself in flames. 

And then, very near my brother's home, here is another 
instance : There were five men who were dragged away into the 
woods by the Germans, and when they got there they saw other 
men there, digging their graves, their own graves. It was the 
cruelty of the Germans. They made them dig their graves, 
then they would be shot, fall into the graves they had just dug 
and the earth put right over. One of them escaped. He was 
shot through the leg, but escaped. He was pursued by the 
Germans, but another regiment of Germans got in front of him, 
and in that way they did not dare to shoot any more and so he 
escaped. When the others followed, they were shot. 

And down in Dinant there was the case of a father, mother 
and four little children ; they were dragged out of their house and 
they were killed right away, the mother and father and three little 
children. The baby escaped, because the Germans did not know 
that he existed. Their sister who lived in Brussels went down to 
Dinant and got the baby. 

There are things in Belgium so horrible that there are no 
words for a girl to tell. But all those things will come out after 
the war, because there is now, right now, in Belgium an Inquisi- 



262 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

tion Service working, and I know people who are working on it. 
There are proofs and pictures of everything. 

A few days after the fire of Louvain, in the beginning of 
September, we heard guns from Antwerp so clear that the win- 
dows of the house, our whole house, would shake in the vibration 
of the guns. At twilight daddy and I went for a walk beyond 
Brussels, through the valley between Malines and Brussels. We 
could see the smoke of the guns. It was one of those September 
sunsets when the sky was all red, and that red made us think of 
the blood of our boys that was streaming down there for all of us. 

That night there were so many of the Germans who came into 
the hospital; then we heard of the big victory of our soldiers, 
We heard it by the prohibited paper that is carried through the 
frontier by black dogs. We would not want to read the German 
papers. What is the use of reading lies, anyway? But right in 
Brussels now, there is a paper published, "La Liberte Belgique." 
The Germans don't know where it is published, but the Belgians 
can fool them. Anyway, they have not found it yet. And here 
is the way those papers are sold : You walk in the streets, and 
this man comes right up to you and whispers, "I have papers. 
Do you want to buy one?" And you say, "All right, meet you 
at that corner and that street." And you walk to the street and 
you see the man, and if there are too many people around, you 
say, "I will meet you at another corner." Well, you meet him, 
and you open your coat and he opens his coat, and you pass 
sometimes fifty francs. Then, you say to all your friends, "I 
have the prohibited paper ; meet me at my house this afternoon." 
And they get somebody to translate English and read the paper 
to you. And all the while you and your friends in the house are 
enjoying the paper, there is somebody walking in front of your 
house and watching. Naturally, if you are found with a pro- 
hibited paper, you are liable to be shot very quickly. 

So we heard of the big victory, and we were happy. We 
said to each other, "In a week or two it will be all over" ; but in 
the month of October we heard of the fall of Antwerp. At first 
we would not believe it; it could not be possible that Antwerp 
and her big forts that we thought could not fall, would fall. 
But the spy service was there again, and the Germans, people 
whom we thought were Belgians, had built villas and houses 
around Antwerp, and we found these houses had cement bases 
on which were put the 42-guns, and they knew the exact direction 
to a strategic point or to a fortress, and that is the way Antwerp 
fell in two or three days. But happily, our little army escaped. 

At the end of three months we had in our hospital two 
hundred German wounded and two hundred Belgians. All the 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 263 

girls decided to let all the Belgian soldiers escape during the 
night, and we each brought men's suits for them from our homes. 
I took one of my brother's suits. That night I was on night 
duty with a few girl friends, and the doctors and we dressed those 
men, and they passed between those sentinels who saw nothing 
because it was night time. The next morning the officers saw 
something! They said, "Where are those men?" We tried to 
look innocent. We said, "We don't know." The officers, "Very 
well, we will teach you to know." 

It is strange, when I look over it now, I think I ought to have 
been scared, but I was not in the least. It was great, and I 
thought it would have even been greater if they had shot me 
for the sake of my country. I always wanted to suffer something 
for Belgium. I wanted to be taken to jail or be shot. I used 
to wear my flags on my hat, the five flags of the Allies. On them 
I had written "Union makes strength." On my coat I wore the 
American flag which I have always loved. I draped the pictures 
of the King, Queen, Prince and Princess. If I saw a German 
officer who thought he looked smart, I would put my hat right 
in his face. 

You know the German officers are very queer. They thought 
they were the most stunning creatures on the face of this earth, 
and never could understand why every Belgian girl did not 
fail in love with them. They said they had brought their evening 
suits and they never knew why they never had to use them! 
We Belgian girls hated them cordially. One time I got in a 
street car. You know, they come around to get the fare in 
Belgium. I had seen this man come to get the fare, and while 
I was getting it out of my purse, a German soldier touched me 
on the shoulder. I turned around and glared at the soldier, 
and then to the conductor I said, "Would you mind waiting 
just a second!" And I brushed off my shoulder where the 
German had touched it. I was soiled by the touch of a German. 
So when we saw the Germans, revolvers in hand, we just smiled. 

At twelve o'clock, my father came in with this huge, enor- 
mous German officer. He said, "Daughter, here is Mr. von 
Something-or-other." Germans are always "von" something. 
You know, the Kaiser once prayed God and said to him, "God, 
if you will let me win the war, you won't be called only 'God' any 
more, but 'von God'." When this officer said this to me — and 
it took him ten minutes to say it — "If you er — er — er — I will get 
you out of trouble." I thought it was funny that a German 
officer who had killed women and children suddenly became 
nervous. And he said, "I will give you my word, they will be 
out to-night." I was going to say to him, "Your word ! A Ger- 



264 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

man's word ! Well, we know all about it and about the scrap o'i 
paper too." Then I thought it was more diplomatic not to tell 
him, and I didn't. That night for once the German kept his 
word, and the nurses and doctors went out too. 

Then we worked for the little children of Belgium for six 
months. I used to work, and your beloved American minister 
used to come around in the morning and watch us work. We 
used to make soup from eight in the morning until twelve 
o'clock, cooking cocoa and getting milk, and at twelve o'clock 
those little babies used to come to us laughing. They did not 
know that their mother was hungry and their father was fighting 
at the front or that anybody had been killed. And we would 
play with them, and we would be happy to have them, and we 
would give them cocoa and milk, and in the afternoon we used 
to try to find those poor little children. Sometimes there would 
be six or eight little children in a room with a mother, crying 
from hunger. Sometimes she would be too proud to come, but 
after a while we would persuade her to come, and so we had 
in our canteen over two hundred and fifty of them coming 
every day. 

In the morning I used to go to market for them. It was 
very funny. You know, the Belgian girls used to hate to carry 
in the street even a little package before the war. But one day 
a girl and I found ourselves in a most fashionable part of the 
city, with a huge straw basket filled with vegetables and meat, 
and we laughed and laughed. If somebody had shown us that 
picture four months before, we would not have believed it, but 
war had come, and we were proud to do it. 

At the end of nine months I had a nervous breakdown. I 
hated the Germans so much I wanted to scratch out their eyes. 
That feeling of hatred made me nervous and ill, so I had to leave 
Belgium. To come here I had to ask the Germans for a passport. 
At first they refused, but my father had a way with him. All 
those Germans are sneaks and slaves but they have no middle 
way about them at all. They have very queer minds also. One 
of our very good friends had a home, a country home, outside 
of Brussels. The Germans came and took all his silver and 
all the pictures in his house. He went to von Bissing and said, 
"I have got to have my things back." He said, "All right, I will 
give you one of my officers and you can see whether you can find 
them." So this friend and the German officer went to the house 
to which his things and many other stolen things had been taken, 
and he looked all through these things and could not find his. 
He went to von Bissing and said, "I cannot find any of my 
things there," and von Bissing said, "All right; you can go back 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 265 

and take anything you like for compensation." That is the kind 
of minds they have. 

I had asked for a passport for myself and my governess, 
because you know in Belgium girls do not go at all alone in the 
street. I admit it is much better your way. I came in, and 
the German officer said, "So, young lady, you are going to leave 
Belgium, and you must leave Belgium, and you will never see 
your father again ; and as long as this is Germany's you will never 
come back." And then he smiled and said, "This will always be 
Germany's," and he said, "You must go and your governess can't 
go." I said, "All right, give me my passport." I was allowed a 
suitcase, and went out with my father. My daddy said, "I can't 
think of letting you do it," and mother also was very sad, and then 
she realized I had to go. 

The next morning I left everybody I loved and I smiled as 
I said "Good-bye." I did not look back at the house. I traveled 
all day in the street cars. We would rather be tired and travel 
all day in Belgian streets than to travel two hours in a German 
train and pay them for it. At seven o'clock at night I found 
myself at the German frontier. When the German officer looked 
at my passport he said, "It is no good." I said, "Why not?" 
"Because your picture is not stamped and you can't pass." I had 
in my suit-case a passport which I had to go and see Louvain — ■ 
I saw Louvain nearly all burned. I saw my sister's home where 
she had been so happy for eight years, burned to the ground. 
There were graves of soldiers right in the garden, with just a 
little cross saying "Here lies so-and-so, who died for his coun- 
try." There were bones of horses and cows in the yard. One 
moment I came to the street, and I wanted to pass through a 
street, but the soldiers were there. I used to speak German, but 
I voluntarily forgot it. I said to the German soldier, "Can I 
pass?" "No." "Why, what is happening?" And from where 
I stood I saw the bodies of men, or rather what was left of the 
bodies of civilians. The soldier said, "Go your way, you have 
not seen anything." I said, "No, I haven't seen anything." 

And I went back to Brussels. I saw the ruins of Malines 
which had been bombarded. I saw another city in which there 
were just four houses left standing, and all through Belgium, 
poor little Belgium. 

And there I was at the frontier and they said, "You can go," 
and I stepped on the train. I was to go alone and my father was 
to stay in Belgium. At the moment our car pulled out, he 
called and said, ''Don't go; come back," and I said, "Daddy, I 
must go." I smiled, because I wanted to smile. When your sons 
go away, smile when they go; they will remember your smile. 



266 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

That is the way I see my father always, standing at the frontier 
of my country, in the twilight, waving his hat to me as the car 
pulled out. 

Well, suddenly I found myself in Holland, and I pulled out 
this Belgian flag I had in my pocket and waved it and screamed 
"Freedom!" There I was in Holland all alone at eight o'clock 
at night. I spent the night at a Dutch hotel, full of Dutch 
officers. The next morning I left at half-past five and traveled on 
through Holland. I arrived at the office of the steamship 
company and asked the man if I could get a place on the boat. 
He said: "There are at least two thousand people on the boat. 
You will have to see the director." I said, "Where does he live ?" 
I went there and rang the bell and a little boy came to the door, 
and I said to myself, "I am going to smile; maybe I can get 
something if I smile." So I smiled at him and said, "Can I see 
the director of the company?" But the boy said, "No; nobody 
sees the director of the company." "Well," I said, "that is the 
reason I am going to see him." I had a letter in my pocket to 
the director from my father, and I gave him this letter, saying, 
"You can go and bring that to the director and see what he 
does." The director came running down and said, "Miss Silver- 
cruys, I am so glad to see you. We got a letter from the Minister 
of Holland and he said we were to keep the best place on the 
boat for you." I went to the Belgian Consul and he was very 
kind to me, and I passed ahead of the thousand people waiting 
there. 

And then I went to the English Consul and I was writing a 
telegram to my sister who was at that time at Cambridge Univer- 
sity, in England. She had escaped from Belgium. My brother- 
in-law brought the answer from the University of Louvain. The 
University of Cambridge asked all the professors of the Univers- 
ity of Louvain to come to Cambridge; and the director of the 
University of Louvain telegraphed my brother-in-law who was 
an old studentlat Cambridge, and so he left, and my sister carried 
the answer in her hair as she passed through the trenches, 
through the German line. She spoke German and she passed 
rather easily. She passed in a dog carriage, or rather the three 
children rode in the dog carriage and she walked beside it with 
my brother-in-law and the governness and another Belgian pro- 
fessor. So they passed through Belgium to the coast and 
traveled on a boat full of wounded to England. I was just 
writing a telegram to her when I heard somebody speak German, 
and I thought, "My goodness ! They are everywhere." He was 
a real German and he came and tried to look when I was writing. 
When I knew he was very close and could not get away, I said, 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 267 

"Germans everywhere ! I would like to have a private room for 
the day." 

I went on the boat that night, and on the boat I had my first 
experience in English at breakfast. They had to give me a 
special maid who could speak Flemish. I looked at the menu 
and I thought, "It must be Chinese. I am going to pick out the 
most attractive words in the whole thing and see what they 
bring to me." Guess what I picked out : E-g-g-s a-n-d b-a-c-o-n. 
I thought to myself, "If they bring me an elephant why it will be 
all right. After a while I saw bacon and eggs ! I was so happy 
to be eating bacon and eggs that I ordered it all day long. 

That night I got to England and then went to Cambridge. I 
had my first experience there. I stepped into a hansom cab. 
I had never seen a hansom cab before. I stepped in and sud- 
denly the thing started. I said, "Where is the driver?" And I 
thought, "Well, he will catch up in a minute." And he didn't 
catch up. In the moonlight I saw the horses going, and I 
thought, "He is going back to the stable for sure." But, after 
a while I heard "Cluck, cluck," and thought "Oh, I am saved; 
the man is up there." 

I got to my sister's, and she said, "You must learn English ; 
you must go to college," and the next day I started to go to 
college and to learn English. After two months we got a cable- 
gram from my brother-in-law, who, by that time, was a professor 
at the Columbia University, New York. He said, "Comeover to 
America. Wonderful country." And we came to America, and 
we have always thought it was a wonderful country, and we will 
always think it is. When somebody says to me, "How do you like 
America?" this is my answer: "If I were not a Belgian I would 
want to be an American." 

Now, as I am going to leave you, I want to thank you 
Americans for all you have been doing for little Belgium. Little 
Belgium loves you, and I am glad to be the one here to be able 
to thank you for my people. You have saved little Belgium 
in a way ; you have fed little Belgium, and you have helped her, 
and I know you will still do your best to help the people in 
Belgium. The citizens are very poor there now. Little children, 
anemic first, die by the hundreds of tuberculosis. People are very 
happy to get a piece of dog meat. Dogs over forty inches 
high are not allowed to live for that reason. Milk is only 
allowed to small babies and very ill and old people. An egg y if 
you can get one, — you are not allowed to get more than one egg 
a week — costs you over thirty cents apiece. A pair of shoes 
is over $40.00 ; woolen blankets are $30.00 to $40.00 a pair. You 
must know that that means more to us than it would to you, 



268 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

because life is cheaper in Belgium than it is in America. People 
are very happy to get the war bread that we have there, which is 
not like the wonderful war bread here. It is bread that is brown 
■ — black — and you are just allowed a certain quantity of it, just 
to keep you alive. And it is like that for everything, and when 
you want to go and take dinner with one of your friends, you 
must bring your things for dinner with you. It is so all through 
Belgium — suffering everywhere. 

Even if the Germans should have to stay in Belgium a hundred 
years, never would they down the spirit of the Belgian people. 
I will show you an instance. In a certain part of Belgium the 
Germans requested all the men to come to the Hotel de Ville and 
then this German officer addressed them and said, "Come over to 
Germany. Come and work for us. You will be paid a tremen- 
dous pay and your wives and little children will not be starving 
there." But no man moved except one who stepped forward. 
The German said, "You see this man is an example. He is com- 
ing over to work for us." And he turned to the man and said, 
"What is your business?" And the Belgian answered, "I am a 
grave digger and ready to work for you." That is the spirit of 
the Belgian people everywhere, even in little children . 

Belgium, when she could, fought for the world. Now I am 
going to ask you to help and fight for little Belgium, to fight for 
yourselves and to fight for the world. 



THREE: BY HONORABLE MYRON T HERRICK 

Former United States Ambassador to France 

We have been strangely uplifted and translated. It seemed 
to me as I listened to this dear little girl's address, as though 
this crucifixion of Belgium marked another distinct period^ in 
human progress. It has been extremely difficult for us during 
these trying days to comprehend and understand the meaning of 
this war, because it is beyond comprehension. But the crucifixion 
of Belgium resembles that other period of the new birth of the 
world and the crucifixian of Christ. It seemed to me that this 
young girl was an embodiment of the spirit of her nation; and 
we who have heard her words to-day though we may have thought 
that Belgium had lost her national life, now realize that on the 
contrary she has had a new birth. 

Whatever the causes of this war were in the beginning, and 
that subject has been discussed in all the chanceries of Europe and 
everywhere else in the world, its meaning has at length been re- 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 269 

vealed to us. We have a different comprehension to-day of that 
meaning than we had before. We thought it a commercial war- 
fare ; we thought this ; we thought that. But in these latter days, 
our minds are going back more and more to the morning of 
democracy. Why, democracy had its birth when Christ was born 
in the manger, and that is where the battle began ; and to-day it 
is a question of the divine right of kings as against the divine 
right of peoples, and that battle has been going on in all these 
centuries. We haven't quite comprehended it until these latter 
days, but now we are beginning to understand. And if we should, 
by any reason, fail, then I would feel that I had lost my faith, 
and I haven't lost my faith, No! 

We were all strangely moved by that inspired story of Bel- 
gium. I happened to see something of the other side of the pic- 
ture in those fateful days of 19 14. I saw those people who 
traveled in the street cars, who were driven from their homes, 
filling those long roads in France, moving somewhere away 
from the terrible invading Hun. Oh, my dear girl (turning to 
Mile. Silvercruys) you need not thank us for what we do for 
Belgium. Do not we understand that it was just those days, just 
those fourteen days, that saved America ? 

I had seen that great German army. I had seen sixty thou- 
sand in Berlin on parade ; I had motored through Germany ; I had 
seen the organization, and we had no hope in Paris of staying 
that oncoming tide which seemed as powerful, as overwhelming, 
as the tide of the ocean. There was no one who understood who 
believed it could be stayed, and that is why I have faith ; because 
it was stayed. 

I remember a little incident, the first glimmer, possibly, of 
hope that this might not come to us, because I think I com- 
prehended then in the early days the meaning of the war to this 
extent; that it meant that democracy must go down if Germany 
won. The first glimmer of hope that we had was in the early 
days, about the time of the Battle of the Marne. Every day 
just a little nearer came that powerful army. We knew the plan 
was to come through at Nancy, and Bar-le-duc, and each day 
move a little nearer. 

But one night — now this seems a trifling thing, and you will 
pardon me for being possibly a little superstitious, but how could 
that army have been stayed by the forces that were massed 
against it ? — one night I came down with two secretaries from the 
Chancery to the Seine, and there we saw up the river in that 
little island city a flag, the French flag, across the face of the 
moon, that seemed to sit on the edge of a building. The great 
Jtnoon was coming up and floating across the front of it was the 



270 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

French flag, as though it were pasted on the moon. And on the 
bridge across the Seine and along the quays at different places 
were French people kneeling and praying. They said, "That is a 
sign," and then we learned of this prophecy I had not known be- 
fore. It seems there is an evil prophecy centuries old that on that 
battlefield where those great armies were encamped nearly four 
million men opposing, that on that great plain, some time, in some 
way, the fate of France would be settled. And the French said, 
"That is the sign ; that is the sign ; and France will be saved." 

We were strangely impressed by this incident. This was just 
preceding what was called the great decision. If you will re- 
member, with those armies came Joffre and that brilliant little 
"contemptible army" as the Kaiser called it of eighty thousand 
men, of whom only twenty-seven hundred are now living. It was 
the eighty thousand of the British army that stood in the breach 
with France and had fallen back until that day. They saved the 
day, together with the French ; and possibly, possibly, this was in 
answer to prayer and was the fulfillment of the prophecy centuries 
old, that the fate of France was to be settled in the Battle of 
the Marne. 

And I believe it was not the fate of France alone that was 
settled in the Battle of the Marne. I think that it was the great 
decision for democracy and for civilization, saved by little Bel- 
gium in the beginning, and that is why we may have hope and 
faith that success shall eventually come to the civilized world 
and it shall be saved. 

As to our part and place in the war, how impatient we have 
been all these years. These people on the other side — how 
patient and considerate they have been of us, and I want to say 
that to our friend who sits here, one of the ablest in all Europe, 
who brilliantly and splendidly represented Serbia in Paris during 
the time I was there and who is now the High Commissioner of 
Serbia here in America, speaking for that wonderful little country 
that stands side by side with the rest of the Allies in Belgium, 
how patiently they have waited until we could understand and 
comprehend how it related to us. But finally, the responsibility, 
yea, the obligation, that rests upon us was seen and recognized. 
That responsibility arid obligation are now upon us, after these 
years, when the millions of the boys of France, when those 
boys in Belgium and those splendid Englishmen, have given their 
lives ; when they have stood in the breach and held back that in- 
vading foe whose crimes, as has been said here, would have 
brought shame to Attila — and would have made the North Ameri- 
can Indian blush with shame — these atrocities which were un- 
known at this civilized age, when they have stood and bared their 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 271 

breasts, without arms, often without munitions, but with that won- 
derful spirit, that spirit which is evidenced in reincarnated France, 
they have stood there and waited patiently until we did compre- 
hend. And now, thank God, we have comprehended, and it is we 
Americans who have the responsibility and the obligation — the 
opportunity, I would put it — of saving civilization. It rests upon 
us. 

The things that yesterday, before the war, we regarded as es- 
sential to happiness, to advancement, to American life, have had 
a new appraisal and been thrown in the scrap-heap ; and it is only 
that spirit of mankind, that spirit of democracy that was born 
in the Cradle at Bethlehem that counts, that spirit of little Bel- 
gium that is personified in this young girl. It is only that that 
counts, after all. And now we can hardly wait to organize that 
ability which we have, our resources which are greater than any 
other in world, to perform that service which I believe, and 
I think you believe with me, we were designed by some over- 
ruling Providence to perform, and perform that service, America 
will, without doubt. 



Ex-Ambassador Herrkk's Introduction of M. Vesnitch 

I deem it a privilege to say just a word about my dear friend 
M. Vesnitch. I told my friend, Mr. Olcott, in speaking of his 
being here, that we would possibly be available this afternoon. I 
said that during my time in Paris I regarded M. Vesnitch, even 
though I was there, the most able man in the diplomatic corps. 

Serbia could not possibly have had the spirit that she has and 
have submitted to that ultimatum. There was no possible chance 
for a nation that was worth anything at all, that was worthy of 
being called a nation, to take any other position than Serbia did, 
and she understood perfectly what the consequences were going 
to be. And our obligation is no less to Serbia and to all her 
people who suffer than to the suffering ones of Belgium and 
France. We do not hear of their suffering, unfortunately; the 
curtain is drawn. We do not know of it as we know of Belgium. 
But I know her people have given their lives by the tens of thou- 
sands, civilians and soldiers, to this cause which had its birth, as 
I say, two thousand years ago. 

And my friend Vesnitch, although not so handsome as the 
beautiful girl, is the embodiment of the spirit of Serbia. 



272 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 



FOUR: BY HIS EXCELLENCY, M. VESNITCH, 

Serbian 

You very probably did not expect to hear about Serbia. As 
you will be obliged, by your goodness, to remain half an hour 
more and to hear about Serbia, I ascribe it to the friendship of 
his Excellency, Mr. Myron T. Herrick, who has had, who has, 
and who I hope will continue to have, for Serbia and for her 
representative in France friendship which goes to a point where 
it becomes quite partial in my favor. 

Your meeting has been fixed to-day for Belgium, and I should 
not, in speaking about Serbia, take away any degree of the im- 
pression which this angel girl left upon us all at this moment. 
Because I have the privilege to speak to you, I wish to tell to you 
that the case of Serbia is more tragic, if possible, than that of 
Belgium. 

And to begin with individual experiences, I should add to 
this girl's story that I, who have the honor to speak to you, had 
begun to suffer when I was five years old, because at that age my 
poor father had been killed for his love of country, and I began 
my service in hospitals at the age of thirteen, because I too and 
all my brothers and sisters wished to serve our country as much 
as every one of us was able to do, and when your President said 
that your decision should have taken place on August 4th, 1914, it 
comes from the fact that you are not and you were not aware of 
the situation of other small nations which are in the same case as 
Belgium, and who have done their duty in the same way and with 
the same courage as Belgium, which, of course, does not in any 
way diminish the merit and glory of the country of King Albert. 

We in Europe have been sure that America will not stay for 
long time aside, and we have been sure of that from the first be- 
cause many of us knew your history; but we have been sure 
of that since the historic day that the Germans dropped their 
first bombs on Paris, and at the moment — two minutes after — 
at which the then Ambassador of the United States, Mr. Myron 
T. Herrick, proclaimed, and his words will remain in history, 
that it was pity that these bombs did not kill the American Am- 
bassador, because that would decide that moment the United 
States to take part. 

We knew and we know that there were in your guest of 
to-day personal virtues and qualities — that we felt ; and we knew 
that there was in him besides his personal qualities, something 
which is part of you all, of all the successors of Washington 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 273 

and of Lincoln, and we had learned a French saying which says 
"All will come — all will arrive — to him who knows how to wait." 
And all our task, all the tasks of France, of England, of little 
Serbia, of little Belgium, of Italy, of Rumania, have been con- 
centrated in that fact. We had to wait; we have waited; and it 
has arrived ; and from the moment in which your great democracy 
has decided that there was no more time to remain apart, that 
higher duty which goes over a nation, which imposes obligations 
on every man, on every country, on every nation, to see in his 
neighbors' sufferings his own sufferings, to reject the violated 
justice; that America and the American people were not a nation 
who would and who could close their ears and their eyes, and that 
they would and they had to come, and from the day in which your 
government had decided to take part in this war, from this day 
brighter sunshine has come over all the armies, over all the coun- 
tries, over all the poor suffering peoples. 

From that day we were sure that the outraged rights, that the 
violated justice, have to be avenged, and that they will be. 

But before, end especially from that day, our enemies have 
taken in their hancs a new weapon. From being lions and wolves 
they now would Ike to play the part of the lambs, and they 
now, all over the world, send the messages of peace, of humanity, 
fraternity, and brave the counsels of necessity, that human blood 
shall not be shed more. 

For centuries and especially for the last forty years, these 
men have every day forged the arms to crush down the civilized 
world and to make of them their slaves. The superman, the 
Teuton, the supernation, the German, had to command and the 
rest of the world had to obey. They think, they believe, in this 
moment, that they are arrived at this point, and of course they in 
this moment preach peace, because, in the present conditions 
for the Allies, the peace which would be made to-day would be 
a German peace, would be the accomplishment of German ten- 
dencies, of German desires, of German resolutions. Patience has 
given us the Marne, and, as Ambassador Herrick told to you, 
it is certainly one of the greatest moments in the history of the 
world. The patience and the righteousness of the cause of the 
Allies has been successfully brought to us, you here and the first- 
line peoples, and the peoples, one could say, all the honest nations 
of the world. The patience and sentiment of duty to every one's 
country and to the general cause has imposed upon the peoples 
who are allies the silence of their individual and selfish interests 
and the concentration of all our thought to one purpose, to 
victory. This patience and this obligation have brought the pub- 
lic men in every European country, one can say, to the con- 



274 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

viction that there was a moment in which in the internal life of 
every nation there must be made an armistice; that every one 
of us has just to put somewhere safe, his political and personal 
opinion, and that every one of us has to look on that insignia 
there. That conviction has worked miracles in Europe. Three 
months ago M. Poincaire and M. Clemenceau were men who 
did not greet each other. Within two months and a half M. Poin- 
caire was made President of the French Republic and M. Cle- 
menceau his Prime Minister. 

We are most unhappy; I speak like a simple soldier, in the 
great Allied army. I represent one of the smallest nations, one 
of the nations which, technically, militarily speaking, has not much 
to offer to the Allies, because, what we had we have given it; 
but we have something more. We have about one hundred thou- 
sand soldiers more. That is, one hundred thousand soldiers are 
ready to give their lives for our country, but at the same time, 
for the great, for the noble cause for which all Allies fight in 
this moment; and we are sure that in all of the Allied countries 
this consciousness of the tragedy of the moment, this same spirit 
will inspire all men, of whom the most modest one bears on his 
shoulders a part of the responsibility and at the same time of the 
glory of his country. 

His excellency said that during twenty centuries this fight has 
been going on. I ask the permission to add to this only two or 
three words. The autocracy on one side, the democracy on the 
other side, fight against each other. One could say, since the 
world exists, it is the evil fighting against the good ; but since we 
are in history, the autocracy is represented by nations belonging 
to the German race ; the democracy is represented by nations who 
in one or in another way belong to the Celtic races. And nowa- 
days these two principles are personified, on one side by Germany 
and autocracy, and on the other side by nations belonging in one 
or another way to the Celtic races, representing the principles of 
democracy. 

I shall not keep you longer with the development of these 
truths, but I ask permission to quote only one fact known to 
any of you : with democracy goes all the high ideals of human- 
kind ; with autocracy the contrary. The German poets, the Ger- 
man painters, the German musicians, have never found an ideal 
in their own history. When Schiller was anxious to give to his 
country an ideal, a personification of liberty-loving peoples, he 
went to France and he took the Maid of Orleans, or he went 
to Switzerland and he took William Tell. He was not able to find 
it in Germany. And when Goethe, the greatest materialist, had 
to present to his nation a type of civic courage, he did not find it 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES 275 

in Germany. In the music, in the painting, and so on, I could give 
to you many and many examples. 

Is the human race to undergo the German domination, to 
abdicate all that makes man dignified to be a man, and to be- 
come slaves and soldiers of the Kaiser, or is the human race 
to go the way of freedom, or justice, or fraternity? I know 
your decision. Well, knowing your decision, I am sure of the end 
of this trouble as I am sure of the fact of standing here before 
you at a quarter to five. I thank you for the kindness with which 
you have allowed me to speak for a moment to you. I am not 
sixteen years old, and I have not been in a college, neither at Cam- 
bridge nor at Columbia, so my English, of course, is very broken ; 
but my heart and your heart are strong, and we understand each 
other even if our grammar or syntax is false in our language. 



FIVE: BY REVEREND WILLIAM F. PIERCE 

President Kenyon College 

I am keenly conscious of the brutal cruelty of detaining you 
longer than this present moment, and I am also so conscious of 
my own inadequacy and unworthiness that, for the first time in my 
life, I think, I can remember the biting words of Bernard Shaw 
about the teaching profession, without resentment: 

"He who can, does ; he who cannot, teaches." 

You have been listening to those who have done, and now you 
are asked to listen for a few moments to some one who is merely 
teaching. However, on behalf of Kenyon College, I am not alto- 
gether without excuse for detaining you a moment this afternoon, 
since this is, in some real sense, an occasion in which Kenyon 
College has a personal part. 

It is about ten years since the faculty of that institution de- 
cided to honor at the annual commencement with the highest de- 
gree in the gift of the college, Doctor of Laws, one of the most 
brilliant members of the New York delegation in Congress, a 
gentleman whom I have for many years had the honor of num- 
bering among my intimate personal friends and whom I dearly 
love, the Chairman of your Committee on Arrangements this 
afternoon, the Honorable J. Van Vechten Olcott. In the same 
class with him was graduated with this same honor the Governor 
of Ohio to whom you have listened to-day, one of the best and 
most efficient Governors that Ohio has ever had, a Governor too 



276 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

good, indeed, for many of the citizens of that State fully to ap- 
preciate. Not long after his term expired, however, an hour 
came, when the man and the occasion met, and to-day the State 
of Ohio, the whole United States, realizes that in the speaker of 
this afternoon we have listened to an American who, although 
without public office for the moment, is supremely the citizen of 
the whole world. Wherever the history of diplomacy of the 
twentieth century is written, the contribution which the American 
Ambassador made in those fateful days of August and September, 
1914, in those first months of the war, will be remembered as a 
supreme example of brilliant and efficient diplomacy, and of 
courage and of heroism. 

You remember that in the days of the "Red Terror" in France, 
the only member of the diplomatic corps who remained and who 
defied Robespierre and his fellow revolutionists in the name of the 
principles of law-loving liberty for which the United States stood, 
was a citizen of your own State, the American Ambassador of 
that day, Gouverneur Morris. In the beginning of this world con- 
flict, the American Ambassador, Myron T. Herrick, was the only 
diplomat who remained in Paris in the face of the oncoming Ger- 
man Army. 

I think you will agree with me, therefore, that the faculty of 
Kenyon College chose very wisely on that Commencement Day in 
conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws on these two gentlemen 
who are present this afternoon. 

And, in this present conflict, Kenyon has done, I believe, its 
full duty as a college. Whatever errors, whatever shortcomings, 
it may be guilty of, it has certainly not been remiss in teaching 
sound patriotism and a sense of loyal citizenship. For the last 
twenty years, this small college for young men has had an average 
student attendance of a trifle less than 120. Two hundred and 
nineteen of its sons are at present serving their country. The 
college is doing something in the present, as it has done in the 
past. 

With reference to the personal matter to which your Chairman 
has made reference, may I tell you very briefly that within the 
past two or three months I have been asked by the Land Division 
of the Red Cross, covering the States of Ohio, Indiana and Ken- 
tucky, to represent them officially on the platform ; and that very 
recently arrangements have been made, through the national 
headquarters, for me to go to the other side for two or three 
months of investigation and observation of the actual work of 
that organization in France, in order that, on my return, I may in 
some trifling way help to keep the people of those States conscious 
of their duty and responsibility in this great crisis. 



UNITED STATES AND ITS RESPONSIBILITIES Til 

I have been a very happy man since this opportunity came to 
me. We all of us want to do something. I had hoped that I 
was doing a trifle indirectly through the young men with whom I 
was associated, but the privilege of seeing the great thing oneself, 
and of communicating the ideas and inspiration which one must 
get on the other side to the people in one's own State, is a high 
and noble privilege indeed ; for we are now fighting a battle which 
is absolutely critical, both in the material and in the spiritual 
sense, for the destiny of America. 

In the first days of the war I saw in a Berlin illustrated paper 
a symbolic presentation of the spirit of Germany. "Germania" 
was the only inscription below. You know the lofty figure 
which in New York harbor welcomes every liberty-seeking citi- 
zen to our shores. You know how we conceive the serene and 
stately figure of Columbia. "Germania" was a very different 
sort of goddess indeed. A long line of marching men in Prus- 
sian uniform, with spiked helmets, were on the ground, and above 
in the clouds hovered an angry goddess clad in armor and helmet 
and bearing in her upraised right hand an unsheathed sword ready 
to strike death and destruction to the enemies of her sons on 
the earth. 

That sword is uplifted to-day against us; the hatred is deep 
and bitter ; and if America is not, as the long scroll of history un- 
rolls to take her place among those organizations that have passed, 
along with Assyria, Persia, Greece, the Roman Empire and many 
others, if she is not to take her place among those governments 
which have died, she must march straight on and through to 
victory in this great war. 

No sharper contrast could be imagined than the square and 
definite challenge as to ideas and principles which the powers of 
Central Europe now offer to America. In our Constitution, for 
the first time perhaps in more than eighteen centuries, the prin- 
ciples of Christian brotherhood were written into the fundamental 
law of a nation. Those principles are squarely challenged and 
negated in the position which Germany takes with reference to 
those fundamental questions of liberty, of justice, of the rights 
of man. 

In this particular season, it is natural that Christians should 
remember the forty days of temptation of our blessed Lord. The 
supreme temptation which the Devil offered, the culminating one, 
was a view from a high mountain showing all the kingdoms of 
this world, and adding, "All these things will I give thee if thou 
wilt fall down and worship me." To-day we are facing a power 
whose emperor, whose administrators, and whose citizenship have 
adopted that principle and paid that price. 



278 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

After listening to the lovely young girl clad in the Belgian 
national costume, you cannot but appreciate that the marks of 
diabolism, the marks of devotion to Satan and to the cause of 
darkness, become clear and distinct indeed in the world of ideas 
and in the principles of action. When Professor Lasson, of the 
University of Berlin, states that there can be no law between 
nations ; when a Privy Counsellor of the Empire, Joseph Kohler, 
head of that Department in the University of Berlin, states that 
the international law of the future shall be dictated by Germany, 
you can come to appreciate, not simply from the acts of the sol- 
diery, nor from the orders of the government, but with reference 
to those fundamental principles upon which governments are 
based, that the German Empire embodies the principle of Satan- 
ism and of darkness as applied to the relations between man and 
man. 

And upon us, then, is incumbent the high privilege and respon- 
sibility of bearing our part in this great struggle. At first, we 
thought it might be indirect and a minor one. Then we became 
conscious that we must enter the war, and must supply, of our 
money and our property, aid to the Allied cause. We have now 
come to realize that our part is a principal one. It may, conceiv- 
ably be a decisive one in that long warfare which has been going 
on since the beginning of the world between the principles of light 
and of darkness. 

It is for us, then, to consecrate all that we have and all that 
we are to the cause of our Allies, to the cause of murdered Bel- 
gium and Serbia, and to the cause of America, which is the 
cause of the eternal principles of truth and justice and righteous- 
ness. 



EIGHTH DISCUSSION 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-THIRD, I918 
CANADA IN THE WAR 



CANADA IN THE WAR 



ONE: BY ROBERT W. BONYNGE 

President, Republican Club of New York 

Before I proceed to the discharge of the very pleasant duty 
that the Chairman has assigned to me, I want to take advantage 
of this, the first opportunity I have had this year, to do what 
I know the Chairman of the Saturday Discussions Committee 
did not expect me to do, but which I am very sure all of you 
would be glad to have me do, and that is, to express on behalf 
of the Club our sincere thanks and our congratulations also, to 
the Chairman of the Saturday Discussions Committee and his 
associates on that Committee for the brilliant success of this 
season's meetings. 

Each meeting has been of a distinctive character, and all of 
them have been grand successes. The impression left on us at 
the close of each meeting being the freshest and the keenest, has 
been that each meeting has surpassed in enthusiasm and interest 
its predecessors. I feel this afternoon that we must have reached 
the climax of this very remarkable series. I measure my words 
when I say that I do not believe the membership of any organi- 
zation anywhere in the country has been privileged to hear such 
a remarkable series of patriotic addresses on the war and all of 
its phases as we have listened to in this room this winter. 

We have with us as guests distinguished citizens of the Do- 
minion of Canada and other guests who are either citizens or 
residents of this country, former Canadians; and, as the Presi- 
dent of the Club, I want to testify to them how sincerely and how 
thoroughly we appreciate the honor of their presence with us 
to-day. We honor them not alone because of our admiration for 
them as men and as individuals, and I assure them that is very 
great and very sincere ; but, above all, because they are the worthy 
representatives of that great people who live across the imagi- 
nary northern boundary line of our country, and to whom we 
are bound by every tie of kinship, of friendship, of love and 
affection, and now, more than ever, of purpose, of aspiration and 
of determination. 

We know the noble and heroic part that your people have 

281 



282 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

taken in this great struggle, not alone for the defense of the 
rights of Canada, or of the mother-country to which you are so 
proud to own allegiance, but in defense of our rights and of 
the rights of civilization and humanity generally. The sacri- 
fices your people have made, the losses they have sustained so 
uncomplainingly, and the lives of your brave sons that you 
have so freely given in this cause have increased, if possible, 
the profound admiration we have always entertained for the 
people of Canada. The reports and the stories that have come 
to us of the courage and bravery of your brave sons, of their 
deeds of valor and heroism, at Vimy Ridge, at Lens, in the 
trenches and in all the battlefields of the Western front, have 
kindled the spirit of enthusiasm and patriotism in the hearts 
of the youth of our land, and they have waited impatiently, oh 
how impatiently, for the call to the colors, that they might share 
with you the burdens of the conflict and the glory of the victory 
that is to come. 

Some of them could not wait for the call. They crossed 
that imaginary northern boundary line and enlisted in your regi- 
ments with your boys, and they went across the seas and some 
of them fell; and thus the blood of your sons and the blood of 
our sons has mingled upon the same battlefield in defense of 
the same cause, and a bond of union has been established be- 
tween our peoples which, please God, may never be broken. 

But at last the call has come; our boys are "over there," 
four hundred, five hundred, or six hundred thousand — we do not 
know the numbers ; the censor does not let us know ; perhaps 
the Germans do — but let me assure you that whatever the num- 
ber may be now, there are millions more, yes, five or ten 
millions, waiting for the call and ready to go and "do 
their bit." 

We have given our word to the world, and it will not be 
broken, that we are ready to sacrifice all of our resources, our 
wealth and the lives of our dear sons in this cause that you and 
our other Allies have so nobly defended for us during more 
than the three years last past. We are in this war to the finish. 
We do not want any inconclusive or patched-up peace. We 
feel that there can be no lasting peace in the world until victory 
has been won, and we are prepared to stay in the fight until that 
victory has been won. And, when it comes, as come it must, 
and your sons and our sons, those of them that may be spared, 
return to their loved ones and to their grateful countries, may 
this friendship that has existed for more than one hundred 
years between your people and our people, last for countless 
ages to come, and may we continue to dwell in bonds of most 



CANADA IN THE WAR 283 

intimate and friendly and commercial and social intercourse. 
May these two governments living on this continent dedicated to 
freedom, the offsprings of the same mother-country, continue 
to be the guardians of the liberty of their own people and the 
defenders of right and justice and of civilization and humanity 
the world over. 

Distinguished guests, on behalf of the Republican Club and 
in its name, I bid you one and all welcome, thrice welcome, to 
the Republican Club House. 



TWO: BY SIR EDMUND WALKER, C.V.O., LL.D., D.C.L. 

I am to speak to you this afternoon about Canada's part in 
the war, so far as that can be sketchily dealt with in the short 
time at our disposal. I realize that I am talking to an audience 
unusually alert, keen and intelligent. I shall try not to be boast- 
ful, although the greatest of Canada's orators urged all Cana- 
dians to boast about their country. But I shall not use any 
camouflage or waste any words, because I have a great deal 
to say and I should like to say all I can. 

Now, we Canadians have been lately amused and amazed 
somewhere at a series of articles in the New York "Times" by a 
gentleman writing under the name of "An American Jurist." 
The articles about Canada have been sufficiently answered by 
Americans themselves, and need no treatment on my part; but 
they cause one to understand how easy it is for an intelligent 
and honest-minded and not unkindly man to live alongside of 
another country and to fail utterly to understand that country; 
and I am going to speak to you this afternoon with the idea 
in my mind that there are many intelligent Americans who have 
not read the history of Canada and who do not understand 
entirely the impulses which move the people to the north, and 
if I tell you many of the things which you know quite well, I hope 
you will forgive me, in the interest of those who may not know 
them quite so well. 

Now, when we realize this lack of understanding on the part 
of Americans it hurts us even more than what Kipling indicates 
in his hymn or song to the "Native-born" : 

"We've drunk to the Queen — God bless her! 
We've drunk to our mother's land; 
We've drunk to our English brother 
(But he does not understand)." 



284 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

I wish this afternoon to take up, in introduction, the kind of 
experiences which caused the Canadian people to act as they 
did. We realize that we owe to two great American scholars, 
George Louis Beer, one of the most distinguished sons of Colum- 
bia, and Clarence W. Alvord, the knowledge which we have and 
which all people have about the development of the colonial 
system of Great Britain from Elizabethan times. But while 
we realize that, we fail, all of us, to realize sufficiently that the 
greatest good fortune that happened to the British Empire was 
the loss of the Thirteen Colonies ; because it was in consequence 
of the loss of the Thirteen Colonies that the spirit of the remain- 
ing colonists of Great Britain, and especially the remaining 
colonists of North America, caused them to enter on those 
struggles, generally parliamentary but sometimes struggles of 
bloodshed, in order to secure for themselves an autonomy so 
complete that they are not only the freest of the republics of the 
world, but, in the case of Australia, I suppose the most ad- 
vanced democracy in the world. 

Now, Americans have not always understood that the United 
States is not the most advanced democracy, nor have they under- 
stood that the overseas dominions of Great Britain consist of a 
series of modern democracies made free as they are because of 
the terrible mistakes that Great Britain made when she allowed 
the Thirteen Colonies to find a reason for departing from her. 

Now let us consider the kind of people that Canada is com- 
posed of. First we have the French Canadian people who have 
chosen to be aloof from the rest of North America, and who 
will stay aloof, more or less, from North America, whose peculi- 
arity you may realize as business men, when I tell you that for 
nearly two generations after the Conquest of Quebec they still 
valued the coins they had used before the Conquest, and still 
clung to them because they were used to keeping their accounts 
in those coins. 

But the other parts of Canada were settled by those people 
born, in many cases, on the North American continent, many 
of them British, but sometimes of Dutch or Swiss or even of Ger- 
man descent, who chose not to stand with the Thirteen Colonies, 
but who chose to go into the forests and gain a new home for 
themselves in Upper Canada. These people are intensely British, 
more British than the English, if anything. They respond in- 
stantly to the call of anything that influences the British Empire. 

Then we have the Scotch people all over Canada ; but we 
have particularly the Highlanders of Cape Breton, Pictou or Glen- 
garry, those of Cape Breton speaking almost entirely Gaelic, as 
is the case in Glengarry. And we have the descendants of the 



CANADA IN THE WAR 285 

fur traders, largely Scotch, who left the North of Scotland and 
settled in the northwest, people who knew that when they put 
"H. B." in front of a prairie schooner they were free from 
marauders and from any kind of thing. 

Then we have the people like myself, descendants of English 
people who came to Canada because they were poor and came 
to better their condition. 

We have many other kinds of Canadians; but I have tried 
to show you that clanship is a great thing. One or two Cana- 
dian stories which will illustrate just exactly what clanship 
means: The Governor-General who was a Canadian of Jacobin 
Catholic descent in Glengarry, invited John Greenfield Mac- 
Dougal, a member of Parliament from Glengarry, to dine with 
him. He declined at once, but feeling that was not sufficiently 
clear to the Governor-General, he added, "When did a Mac- 
Dougal sup with a Campbell?" 

And when a wealthy American gentleman named Frazier, 
enamored of descriptions of Canada, went to Cape Breton some 
years ago, he asked a local Highland Scotch Canadian at the 
station to get his bag and carry it for him. After the Scotch- 
man had carried it a mile or so, his eye happened to light on 
the label. That was enough. He dropped the bag in the road 
and struck off, with "Am I a dog, that I should carry the bag 
of a Frazier?" 

These are the people who chose to be colonists of Great 
Britain, but who succeeded by one fight after another in wresting 
from Great Britain an autonomy so complete that it leaves noth- 
ing but a silken thread and the bonds of blood, which you know 
are stronger than a feeling of loyalty to rules of Parliament or 
any other feeling. Canada, as we said, fought Downing Street 
for every species of right ; nevertheless tribal feeling is stronger 
than the laws of any Parliament, and our men rushed to the 
colors because of the blood that was in them and because of the 
dear people at home with whom they were still connected. We 
did not, as you know, hesitate a moment, because Great Britain 
had pledged her word to Belgium and we saw that she needed 
every son of the Empire to enable her to redeem her pledge; 
not because it was the greatest cause that the world has ever 
known, and I will not pretend for a moment that that was the 
reason that they rushed to the colors. It was because England 
was in danger. 

Now, our people were undoubtedly moved by what another 
friend of the North wrote in 1861, when Mrs. Browning said in 
expressing her confidence in your great republic, that 

"The stain upon the honor must come off upon the flag." 



286 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

This time the flag was the Union Jack which we love as pas- 
sionately as you love the Stars and Stripes. Our people knew 
that Great Britain had made her pledge to Belguim, and that in- 
stant they saw that any stain upon our honor must come off 
upon our flag, and that was what made our people act and act 
quickly. And so we said to the mother, if I may quote Kipling 
again, 

"Gifts have we only today, 

Love without promise or fee ; 
Hear, for thy children speak 
From the uttermost parts of the sea !" 

Now, you remember that July of 1914, the anxiety, the hopes, 
the fears, the uncertainties, as to whether England would be in 
the war or not. Before that month was over, men from all parts 
of Canada were offering either militia regiments already in ex- 
istence, or to raise regiments ; and one man telegraphed from 
Winnipeg as early as the fifth of August : 

"It is war to the death and one or other of the warring nations 
will go down. That will not be Great Britain. They have struck 
at the British Empire of which Canada is a forceful part. Let 
us show them of what stuff we are made." 

Turning from the other for a moment, on the third of August, 
at twelve o'clock at night, I was asleep in my country home, 
fifty-three miles from Toronto. A man came across the lake with 
a telegram indicating that I was wanted in Ottawa on the fourth 
of August, on Monday afternoon. This was Sunday night. I 
called my son and he spent a couple of hours in making sure that 
his car could meet all requirements. I caught the morning train 
at Toronto, was in Ottawa at four o'clock in the afternoon, met 
there the other finance ministers and the other bankers, and at 
eight o'clock we had prepared and the Government had con- 
firmed a series of orders in council, which would make it un- 
necessary to have a single bank holiday and to make it possible 
for anybody to have free discount facilities ; and the machinery 
has never changed since war begun; but machinery un- 
doubtedly not used because of the efficiency of the machinery 
if it had to be put into force. 

We did not hesitate; we rushed to the colors. Why, the 
war was declared on the fourth of August, and on the sixth of 
August the orders for the enlistment of the first contingent were 
passed by Parliament. We were just two days in discussing in 
Parliament what we would do. By the twenty-first of August, 
in seventeen days, we had raised that regiment which is now 



CANADA IN THE WAR 287 

immortal, called after the Princess Patricia. The Princess Pats 
began, the other soldiers followed, the trip to Valcartier ; and by 
the twenty-second of September, that is, in one month and one 
day, the embarkation of troops began, which was finished on the 
first of October, from Gaspe, a particular place that I don't 
even to this day know the location of. Thirty-two transports and 
ten warships carried 33,000 men and 7,500 horses, arriving in 
Plymouth on the fourteenth of October, two months and ten 
days after the war broke out. 

The credit for that was due very largely to a man who has, 
since then, been greatly under criticism because, as old Sir David 
Beers said, "He was difficult to get -along with," Sir Samuel 
Hughes. He made this address to his men when he said good- 
bye to them: 

"Within six weeks you were at your homes, peaceful Cana- 
dian citizens. Since then your training camp has been secured ; 
three and a half miles of rifle ranges — twice as long as any other 
in the world — were constructed ; fences were removed ; water of 
the purest quality was laid in miles of pipes ; drainage was per- 
fected ; electric light was installed ; crops were harvested ; roads 
and bridges were built ; ordnance and army service corps build- 
ings were erected; railway sidings were laid down; woods were 
cleared; sanitation was perfected so that illness was practically 
unknown, and 33,000 men were assembled from points, some 
of them upwards of 4,000 miles apart. You have been perfected 
in rifle shooting and to-day are as fine a body — officers and men 
— as ever faced a foe. The same spirit as accomplished that 
great work is what you will display on the war fields of 
Europe." 

Well at that time, our idea of what we ought to do was to 
raise 50,000 men and maintain that number in the field. Well, 
there followed, after their arrival at Plymouth, the only unex- 
citing and dreary time that the Canadians have had since the 
war begun, that is the winter on the mud flats of Salisbury. It 
was not such an unlivery time for the farmers, because there 
was a great call for extra locks on the hen-coops! 

Step by step, we had to realize that we must raise more than 
the fifty thousand men we promised at first ; and finally we de- 
cided to try and place in the field five hundred thousand men 
instead of the original fifty thousand. Five hundred thousand 
is about the equivalent of six and a half million men from the 
United States. We have raised from 425,000 to 450,000 men, 
then resorted to the draft to complete our number. I think the 



288 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

draft is the truly democratic principle of raising an army. But, 
let me say to you, as a Canadian, that because of the lack of 
contractual relations with Great Britain, we were not bound 
to see to the defense of the Empire. 

Step by step, we also realized that in addition to raising what 
was to us a vast number of men, we must feed and clothe and 
arm the men, and then we realized that we must make ammu- 
nition and raise products of all kinds in excess of what was 
necessary for our own men, to the last ounce of our own capacity. 
Our notion of finance was so timid that we said to Great Britain, 
"You must send us fifty million dollars a month in order that 
we may be able to put these men in the field." That lasted for a 
few months, when we realized that England's burdens were too 
great for that, and then we realized that we must raise muni- 
tions on a great scale, and we must pay our own way and we 
must give credit for the productions that we raised. 

Now, if you will stop to think of Canada at that time, you 
will see it as a country largely agricultural, fond of after-dinner 
speeches and meetings of Boards of Trade, calling itself a manu- 
facturing country, but a country, after all, which was based 
on the basic things like copper and iron-mining, flour mills, and 
which made agricultural machinery and electric machinery, if not 
too difficult, and all of the things that represented a country at 
about the stage that you were in at the time of the Civil War; 
hoping at some time to reach your condition, but not at that 
stage at that time. 

We needed a great deal more carefulnes and exactitude in 
manufacturing than we had ever known. The first problem that 
came to us was to secure the machinery. Fortunately, we had 
alongside of us a country where the making of lathes and the 
making of fine machinery was an art, and it became easy for us 
to fill our factories with the necessary kinds of machinery. Then, 
when they were built, we did not possess in Canada trained work- 
men of the kind that were necessary. We had to go to work 
and train people to make them fit for this higher class of work 
demanded in the articles which we had to make. They amounted 
in the first year to over five hundred thousand kinds of articles. 
How many of them we actually made ourselves, I can't tell you. 
I tried to describe the present condition in a few words, at an 
annual meeting of my bank a few days ago, and I will read a 
paragraph from it: 

"Canada is producing gun ammunition, including propellants, 
high explosives, fuses and cartridge cases in 550 factories situ- 
ated from St. John in the east to Victoria in the west. In addi- 



CANADA IN THE WAR 289 

tion to contracts given to private corporations, the Imperial Mu- 
nitions Board has developed government factories for the loading 
of fuses, for the production of powder and high explosives, for 
the manufacture of sulphuric and nitric acids and acetone, and of 
steel and forgings, and for the construction of aeroplanes. The 
Board has also contracted for the building of a large number of 
the latest type of high-power aeroplane engines (I am now 
referring to the making of engines for fighting planes at 
the front. It was thought that nowhere could works be found 
fine enough to make them ; doubtless they could have been made 
in this country.) 

I will stop for one minute to illustrate what I mean by 
the difficulties of this high class of manufacturing. I think of 
a factory, managed by a graduate of the University of Toronto, 
where, before the war, bicycles and automobiles were made, al- 
though not on a very large scale. In that factory they are making 
at the present time, or were a month of two ago, 12,000 fuses 
of the time fuse and percussion fuse type, and 28,000 of the 
high explosives daily. That is 40,000 fuses daily or a million 
fuses a month, and a million fuses are enough to fire the shells 
for a barrage of as intense a kind as ever happens in this present 
war for the entire length of the western line, French, American, 
Canadian, British. 

Now, when I tell you that for a short time the British Army 
depended for sixty per cent, of its fuses upon that one factory 
in Toronto, which six months before had been making bicycles 
and automobiles, you will understand what I mean by the kind 
of pressure on human ingenuity which this war has called for. 
That factory is manned by two thousand men and four thousand 
women to-day. When I speak of fuses, let me say that there 
are twenty-four parts in the time fuse and seventeen parts in 
the percussion fuse. Forty thousand a day means that in that 
factory those four thousand women and two thousand men are 
turning out 750,000 pieces of machinery which must be true to 
one-tenth of a second in a flight of twenty-two seconds. I think 
a Waltham watch does not bear any relation whatever to 
that ! 

The Imperial Munitions Board have already given orders in 
Canada for over one billion dollars' worth of material of dif- 
ferent kinds and we have made in Canada, up to date, over 
fifty million shells. I said that we had to begin early in the 
day to give long time credit to Great Britain. Great Britain, as 
you know, has given you, since the war began, over the one billion 
dollars' worth of gold, and the gold was shipped to this country 
until the moment came when that had to stop, and the time 



290 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

came when we realized that the Allies must have credit until the 
war is over for everything they buy. 

Listen for a few minutes to the financial condition of Canada. 
I want you to realize that the problem can only be considered 
together ; we must work together here if we fight together "over 
there" for the greatest cause that was ever known. Before the 
war Canada was one of the poorest countries. We have six or 
seven millions in population, an area as large as the United 
States, and an enormous incoming immigration. Really, we are 
in our days of railroad building, of public building of every kind. 

Our foreign trade at March 31st, 1913, the end of our fiscal 
year, was one billion, sixty-three million dollars, excluding gold 
— an enormous foreign trade for the population, but our imports 
exceeded our exports by three hundred and ten millions, and 
we also owed about one hundred and twenty-five million dol- 
lars for the interest on foreign indebtedness already incurred ; 
so that we had to find four hundred and thirty-five million dol- 
lars on March 31st, 1913, to pay our way. We owed most of 
that difference to you, but we sold our securities to Great Britain, 
and she really bought our securities and gave us the money to 
give you the cash to pay for the quantity of goods we had bought 
from you. 

Now, on the 31st day of March, 1917, the foreign trade was 
two billion, forty-three million dollars — this in four years — 
and the imports now exceed exports by three hundred and fif- 
teen million dollars, a change in four years of six hundred and 
twenty-five million dollars in our trade — about the same as a 
change in your trade of seven or eight billion dollars. You realize 
that since last March, about a year ago, the price of everything 
has grown larger, the scale of everything in quantity has grown 
larger, and the figures for 191 8 will be amazingly larger than they 
were for 1917. 

We had to put up on the market, almost entirely for war 
purposes, but not entirely on Canada's account, seven hundred 
and seventy-two million dollars' worth of securities. These se- 
curities before the war were practically all sold in Great Britain ; 
but in the year 191 7 Canada took five hundred and eighty millions 
of her own securities, you took one hundred and eighty-seven 
millions, and an inconsiderable amount of five millions was put 
down to Great Britain. 

Our war has cost down to date seven hundred and sixty 
million dollars. Beside that, the Government has found for Great 
Britain between two and three hundred million dollars and the 
banks have found several hundred millions on their own ac- 
count. Now, the problem for the next year is, of course, bigger 



CANADA IN THE WAR 291 

than ever. What we have to remember is that, in every way, in 
the number of men, in the clothing of them, in the quantity of 
food, in every kind of thing, it actually works like that. The 
scope of it gets bigger and bigger, until the day comes when we 
realize there is peace ahead. That is why all this talk about peace 
is so wicked and wasteful. If we were a self-contained country 
like the United States, we could plainly make all we needed for 
ourselves and send goods to the Allies as well and we could give 
them credit for the whole of it except for the small amount which 
we need for 'foreign indebtedness incurred; but we have to buy 
from you steel, steel forgings, bar steel, all kinds of things, which, 
in the end, find their place either in factories or in steamships 
or in the shells, or in some form of thing the need for which has 
been created by the war and for which we are getting long time 
credit from Great Britain. 

I want to make you representative business men understand 
that if you sell something to Great Britain that must be used in 
Canada, you must give credit to Canada on that account. All the 
wheat, all the wool, all the guns, shells, aeroplanes, ships, every- 
thing that all of us can build is needed, and they must be built 
where they can be built, and they must be paid for where they 
can be paid for. 

We are not war-weary in Canada. I don't think we shall 
ever be war-weary. We have had some of the most remarkable 
campaigns in raising money for patriotic funds and for Red 
Cross purposes that have ever been carried on in any part of 
the world. The London "Times" did us the honor to send Hamil- 
ton Fyfe to Canada to find out how we did it. But in those cam- 
paigns in which we raised such enormous amounts of money, 
really the slogan was always the same, "We have got to stand 
by the boys at the front." 

When our Finance Minister a little while ago asked for a 
loan of one hundred and fifty million dollars, he said he would 
take subscriptions up to three hundred millions. He got subscrip- 
tions of four hundred and seventeen millions! And these were 
from eight hundred and seven thousand people. 

But I must return to the soldiers. One could speak forever 
about the soldiers. By the 15th of February, 191 5, the men were 
away from Salisbury and were at the front. Some of you will 
remember that they were engaged fighting by February 28th at 
St. Eloi. I am not going to tell you what you all know about the 
single battle of Ypres, that wonderful spot where a lot of Cana- 
dian boys who didn't know enough of military tactics to retreat 
barred the way of Germany to Calais and stopped their whole 
army. Nor shall I speak about Vimy Ridge or Passchendaele, 



292 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

but what I want to impress upon you is that we used to be, as 
the cousins of America and cousins of Great Britain, rather of- 
fended when people said there was no Canadian type. The 
Americans said we were half English, and the English said we 
were half American ! And it has been the beautiful privilege of 
our boys to demonstrate that there is a Canadian type, absolutely 
recognizable. It is curiously like your western type in some re- 
spects. I was telling your Chairman about their manners, re- 
minding one of what some one said about your Rhodes Scholar- 
ship boys at Oxford. He said they had the manners of the very 
early gods. They tell about the distress of the British officials 
because the Canadian boys went into fashionable restaurants and 
did not salute the officers. One of them said he would try it, 
and see whether he would salute him. The boy did not, so he 
steppod up and said to him, "My good man, don't you know 
enough to salute an officer ?" And he said, "Oh, yes" ; and he got 
up slowly and saluted and then sat down. The officer said, "What 
company do you belong to, my good man?" "The Glengarry 
Gas Company." 

The most amazing thing about this war, the most comfort- 
ing thing about modern democracy, the most comforting thing 
to those who dread long years of peace, is the way in which 
we have made soldiers out of civilians and the rapidity with 
which it has been done. One of the leading generals — you will 
have heard of him from time to time — is General Currie. He 
was a real estate agent before the war. There is in Italy, the 
second in command in the British Army in Italy — and he is 
a fellow-governor with Sir Robert Falkner and myself on the 
Board of Governors of the University of Toronto — Lieutenant- 
Colonel Mitchell, who never occupied any but Provincial positions 
before the war. 

And then you think of the Imperial Army anxious to build a 
railroad behind the front and asking their engineers how long 
it would take to build it. They examined it and said it would 
take about four weeks; and so in despair they sent for a man, 
General Jack Stewart, and they asked him what he could do, and 
he said, "If you will give me three hundred of the Canadian 
foresters and Canadian railroad men, I could build it in ten days." 
They gave him the men and he. built it in six days. 

But one could tell stories all day, stories about subalterns, 
boys finding themselves with five or six men, disassociated from 
their own commanding officer, and seeing in front of them a Ger- 
man machine gun that was riddling the life out of their fellows, 
taking it on their own account. I could tell incident after inci- 
dent of that kind. 



CANADA IN THE WAR 293 

When the Ridge of Passchendaele was not taken and it was 
decided by the Canadians that it had to be taken, General Currie 
went before his men, knowing he was sending many of them to 
their death, and getting up on a mess table, he said, "Boys, we've 
got to take the ridge. We have been fighting here all summer for 
this. Everything we have done goes for nothing if we can't take 
the ridge. Boys, we have got to take the ridge." And the boys 
cheered him to the echo, and of course you know they took the 
ridge. 

You hear every now and then about the new German method 
of meeting the difficutly, when they could not build trenches, of 
building what are called "pill boxes." I haven't hunted for inci- 
dents. I am only telling you things that came under my notice 
since your Chairman asked me to speak to you. I have a letter 
here written from France in October, 191 7, to a friend of 
mine by his son. This letter describes very graphically the tak- 
ing of pill boxes which are entered from the back, practically 
shell-proof, and from which the Germans could do great 
damage. 

"Early on the morning of the 6th the barrage commenced 
and what a sight it was to us who stood back there and watched 
it ! You know what an unearthly thing a cold November dawn is 
like. Clouds of mist, rain perhaps, and heavy clouds with the 
red of the dawn just coming up. Two hours changed all this 
into a regular blaze of fire and smoke accompanied by the terrible 
and constant throb of hundreds of guns firing. There was still 
enough of the darkness to show off the flashes from guns and 
shells which made it all the more hard to understand how any 
human being could stand up against such a terrific force. A 
year ago we used to think our barrage perfect, but we are only 
beginning to realize now to what length artillery fire can be 
brought. New devices, more guns and experience have all gone 
to bring our gunfire to a stage where it is quite impossible for 
any one to get through it, much less stand against it. Finding 
that the deep dugout was of very little use against us, owing to 
the time that it took to come up from them, the Boche has gone 
into what we call 'pill boxes,' that is, concrete boxes on top of 
the ground large enough to hold from ten to forty men. These 
boxes are very strongly made with f erro-concrete at least five feet, 
and sometimes eight feet thick, furnishing naturally a most per- 
fect protection from shell-fire. The Boche has strewn hundreds 
of these little forts over his back area in groups of four or five, 
and naturally thought he had overcome the effect of our curtain 
of fire as his M. G. men were able to fire through their loopholes 



294 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

with little chance of being hit. He reckoned, though, without 
taking into consideration the men that he was up against. 

"Our fellows had very little trouble with pill boxes during 
the show and the reports of the manner in which they stalked 
these places and captured them would fill books. Every situation 
required a different plan and the greatest credit is due to our 
Section Commanders, chiefly corporals, for the way they got 
through without the slightest check. One instance that I know 
of reads like a V. C. story, and perhaps it may turn out to be one. 
I hope so. 

"A large P. B. was found opposite one of our Lewis Gun 
sections with at least two M. G.'s in it. Our corporal soon laid 
his plan, and a very daring one it was too. He distributed his 
seven or eight men about in shell holes in front of the obstacle 
and had them open fire on the loopholes with their rifles and 
rifle grenades and then taking his Lewis gun by himself, did 
the Indian and crawled around to the back of the P. B., know- 
ing that the Boches would be fully engaged with his men out in 
front. As soon as he got close enough to the narrow entrance 
in the rear, he dashed forward and dropped into a position right 
at the entrance from where he was able to get every Hun inside 
with his gun. Twenty-five men and two officers were counted 
when he got through. Quite a good haul for one man, isn't it? 
And all dead too ! An instance like this will go to show you 
just what sort of stuff the British soldier is made of. I don't 
say Canadian, you'll notice, because what we do is no better than 
any one else. One gets over those horrible insular opinions after 
a very short time. 

(Pretty nearly all of these boys can write good letters; they have 
so much to write about, I suppose.) 

"All our objectives were gained right on time and the show 
was in every way a clean one. That is, there were no setbacks 
anywhere, and everything that was asked was done. Naturally 
our General is very proud of the work of the men, particularly 
so as we had the honor of taking the thing in the whole show. 
We have been congratulated personally by every one from the 
top down, and you can little wonder that I'm proud of the badges 
that I wear." 

All the letters we receive and hear about are full of the un- 
conquerable spirit of the Canadian and British soldiers. We 
love in art, in picture and in poetry to read and to see the happy 
warrior depicted, and we think of him always as a chaste Chris- 



CANADA IN THE WAR 295 

tian knight of mediaeval times. Well, he is not a knight and 
not always a Christian, but always a Cockney Tommy in high 
spirits. 

"For while the world said 'Let none smile' ; 

There is no mirth hereafter: 
The golden lads of Shakespeare's land 
Outfaced their doom with laughter." 

There are no greater heroes than the prisoners of war. Won- 
derful things will be told of them when the boys come back 
from the prisons. I happen to hear from a mother and father 
of one of the boys whom I know quite well who had his chance 
to be exchanged, meaning to go to a neutral country, to Holland 
or Switzerland. He refused to go because he said he was per- 
fectly well, in excellent spirits, but he had a comrade who was not 
well and he begged them to take the comrade and they did. 
Another boy, of Highland stock, but four generations away 
from the Highlands : he had tried to escape and been punished 
for that, and he was offered his escape to Switzerland if he 
would promise not to try to escape from there, but he would 
not take his liberty on those conditions. Another man who said, 
with a lot of other Canadians who were put in the mines to work, 
"No food, no work" and they took their punishment day after 
day. At last he said he got away. He was sixty miles from 
Holland and it took ten nights to do it, but he got away. 

And then I think of the experiences of one or two air men. 
The General Manager of my bank has two sons who are both 
very famous air men. One is one of the leading instructors in 
Texas at the moment. One of them went home after two and 
a half years of fighting, but could not be induced to stay. He 
had a Handley-Page ship which went 135 miles an hour. He 
had successfully bombed Constantinople and was returning, 
when his paddle-blades were struck. He and his companions 
fell into the ocean, swam ashore, divested themselves of their 
clothes, and were sitting on the rocks when they were taken 
prisoners by the Turks. The Turkish officer took their orders 
for clothing for himself and men, went over to town, got the 
clothing and came back to his prisoners. I wish the Germans 
would treat their prisoners as well as the Turks. 

A boy who, four years ago, was a seventeen-year old boy at 
college, that boy accounted for one German warship and two 
destroyers. He was making a fly at a German warship with a 
curve of about a quarter of a mile, of course taking a chance, 
and his bomb hit the ship between the two smokestacks. That 
boy has learned tumbling over like a tumbler pigeon and dropping 



296 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

again, deceiving those who operate the air-craft gun, and then, 
with his own machine gun, putting the air-craft gun out of busi- 
ness, and he does it over and over again. 

The heroes in the war are, of course, the women, the women 
at home. If anybody could have told us five years ago that our 
own daughters would have gone out as nurses and searchers 
on the field of battle, of course we would not have believed it 
was within the range of human possibility. If anybody had said 
that the V. A. D.'s would have amounted in the British and 
Canadian side of the war alone to between twenty and thirty 
thousand, women who are working as hard as they are working 
every day in the service of the army, some working over the 
wounded men, others driving cars, that would have seemed im- 
possible. Your President's friend, Colonel House, was over 
in England, as you know, and he was looked after by a personal 
friend of mine while he was there. When he left the house in 
which he was entertained in London a young lady in charge of 
the car in which he had come took him off. When they arrived 
at the Channel the lady stepped out, handed him out of the car, 
and they thought they had seen the last of her. But when they 
got off the boat, there she was with the car, and she took them 
to Paris, driving them all over that city, a cultivated young lady. 
You would wonder how they get along, these attractive young 
women chauvettes. Well, they have their orders and they are very 
simple: "When anybody tries to flirt with you, walk; if they 
keep on trying to flirt, keep on walking. Keep on walking, or 
you will lose your job." 

We have invented countless things in connection with our 
men. Our own patriotic fund was a fund established for supple- 
menting the pay that the Government gives to soldiers and to 
soldiers' wives and to their children. It has a wonderful and 
splendid history. We have in England an institution presided 
over by Lady Drummond for doing the humane thing for the 
wounded soldier, finding his name, his friends, writing letters 
for him, sending flowers for him, doing something to make him 
understand while on his sick-bed that the women care for him 
while he is fighting for them. Lady Drummond has done tire- 
less work in that respect. 

At home, all of the women are working, as you know, and 
every woman is knitting there as they are knitting here. Some 
Indian women at Prince Rupert, the most northerly part of 
Columbia, sent four hundred pairs of knitted socks, and some 
Eskimo women at a mission station sent $30.00 in money for the 
cause. 

Just as a measure of what we have done in that respect, the 



CANADA IN THE WAR 297 

city of Toronto has contributed for war purposes eight million 
dollars and one or two of the other Provinces forty million 
dollars. 

It is hardly proper for me to say a word about the British 
Navy, but I can't forbear saying that when we are distressed, 
as we are, with such things as the loss of the Tuscania, and the 
weekly submarine rate, let us try to remember that the British 
Navy has done everything possible, and has carried safely from 
port to port thirteen million soldiers, with only the loss of nine 
British transports and nine thousand men. In addition to that, 
it has carried two million horses, twenty-six million tons of 
munitions and fifty-three million tons of coal and oil. 

That is all I have to say about Canada, but I want to say a 
few words about the greatest event that has happened recently 
in the history of the world, the coming of the United States 
into the war. You can't imagine what that means to Canadians 
who have lived in this country. I will tell you one little thing 
that will show you what the United States in coming into the 
war meant to us. There is, in connection with the University 
of Toronto, a wonderful series of buildings for all the activities 
of the men students except study, and in the great dining-hall 
they are putting up the arms of every university in every country 
in the world that is fighting for the cause of liberty at the present 
time, and until you came into it, there was a prospect of the 
great dining-hall of the University of Toronto, with the arms 
of the fifty-five universities of the British Empire and about 
as many in other parts of the world, including Japan, having 
nothing there from Harvard, Yale, Princeton or the other uni- 
versities here. Well, now we have asked Mr. Pritcherd how 
many can be put up there to represent your universities in arms. 

You can hardly think what it would have meant to me to have 
thought of Canadian boys for centuries to come going up to the 
University of Toronto and asking why Harvard or Yale was not 
there. 

But we are in this war together, and fighting together means 
so many things more than the mere entering in the war, that I 
can't think of entering upon a discussion of them this afternoon. 
But there is one question which comes to me and it is this : What 
are we English-speaking people to do hereafter in the cause of 
peace? I was one of the delegates of our Canadian Committee 
to the Peace Conference at Mackinac Island in July, 1914, where 
I had the pleasure of meeting your Mr. T. Kennard Thompson, 
one of the delegates from the Committee on this side of the 
border. I was one of those who, from early in the day, begged 
the English and American Committees not to end their labors, 



298 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

but to suspend them, to hang them on the wall, so that when 
this war is over and when we have to consider what the two 
countries have to be thankful for together, we could have the 
sort of celebration we should have as English-speaking people. 

Just one word more. The tongue of the world is already 
English. When people of different tongues in India wish to 
communicate with each other, they communicate in English. 
That is the alternative language in Japan, China and Norway. 
It is the trade language of the world. It is our business, there- 
fore, to see that the English-speaking peoples come together, so 
that if we do not succeed in winning a peace of that kind which 
will guarantee the world against another war like this forever, 
we shall see to it that those who speak English, at least, shall 
band themselves together so that they shall enforce upon the 
world peace. 

We are none of us any too sure that we can make 
a good job of democracy. We haven't done it yet ; but the abso- 
lute future of the world lies with the English-speaking peoples 
in the world, those who, since King Alfred's time, have fought 
step by step for their rights in the world; and depend upon 
their so interlocking themselves and tying themselves together 
that, whether the rest of the world likes it or not, we shall say 
there shall be peace because we say so. 



THREE: BY SIR ROBERT FALCONER 

President, Toronto University 

I thank you very heartily for the great honor you have done 
me in associating me with Sir Edmund Walker and asking me 
to come to speak to you this afternoon. You have just listened 
to a speech which has been, as you would easily recognize, master- 
ful beyond measure, varied in its human interest and so compre- 
hensive in its sweep that, really, there is not a very great deal 
left for the rest of us who are here this afternoon as Canadians 
to speak about. And I shan't detain you at any great length. 
May I, before I begin, however, in order to emphasize the im- 
portance of what you have listened to, tell you that of all the 
activities of Canada, probably none have been more really suc- 
cessful in the financial undertaking, than the way in which 
Canada at the beginning of the war, knowing so little about the 
future, ventured upon her unknown path with confidence. And 
she has pursued that path with confidence and with success to 
this present. Now, of all those who have contributed to this 



CANADA IN THE WAR 299 

success I think I may venture to say that the gentleman to whom 
you have just listened has been second to none. 

For the few moments during which I wish to speak to you this 
afternoon, I intend to dwell briefly on an aspect that I think has 
only been touched upon by Sir Edmund Walker. Possibly you 
will allow me to supplement what he has said by a few figures 
that may be interesting to those of you who are university men, 
and I am sure there are a large number of university men present 
this afternoon, concerning the universities of Canada. In all, 
there are about fourteen thousand men and women in the uni- 
versities of the Dominion, of whom about ten thousand are men ; 
that is to say, take any one year and count all the students in 
these universities, and there are about ten thousand men scat- 
tered all over the faculties and in all the universities at any one 
time. Well, last August there were on active service from the 
universities, graduates and undergraduates, twelve thousand men. 
That is to say, two thousand more men than are in attendance 
in any one year in all the universities in Canada. And they had 
taken our part, because this sad story that Sir Edmund has 
touched upon in such a delicate way to-day is a story that goes 
very deep and is very continuous. This sad story has to record 
that even in last October there were nearly nine hundred of our 
finest and best who had fallen ; and so often, as the report comes 
each week, almost each day, with painful iteration, one says, "Is 
it so that the very best have to go ?" We don't say that when we 
reason about it ; we believe that as good are left ; but it is when 
we are faced with the individual who has left us never to return 
that we ask ourselves whether, after all, we are not suffering 
almost more than we can stand ? It only means that the universal 
qualities of those who have gone are so rich that we are willing 
to pay an unstinted tribute to each one. But I shan't detain you 
by referring to the universities at any greater length. 

I want, however, to linger, as I said, upon one fact that is, 
to my mind, of supreme importance, and that is the uprising 
of the overseas dominions of India, of the dependencies and of 
the crown colonies, almost as a man, in August, 1914. That was 
an event of world-wide importance, and I believe that that event 
in itself did as much to hearten Britain as any one thing that 
has occurred until you came into the war yourselves. Not only 
did it hearten Britain, but it astonished, I believe, you in the 
United States who thought you knew us. I rather think your 
knowledge of us is not so great as you imagine it is. I know 
from personal knowledge that it amazed many other neutrals, 
like the Dutch people in Holland. That men in South Africa who 
had been fighting against Great Britain a few years before should 



300 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

at once rally to the side of Britain was an act of surpassing sig- 
nificance; and it meant that the British Empire is an institution 
that it is well worth the while of the whole world to study, and 
certainly Germany has done a great deal of studying about it 
ever since ! 

It isn't merely the contribution of men and money that we 
brought; that is not the important thing, important as it is; but 
the fact itself which demonstrates that the principles on which 
the British Empire has been builded are principles that have 
significance for the- structure of the society of the world ; that 
there are moral principles that hold the world together ; and that 
these principles are not based merely on written constitutions; 
that an empire is not "ramshackle" simply because it is not domi- 
nated by some centralized force that can compel individuals from 
every section of the world to rally to its support; but that there 
are moral forces, unseen, invisible moral forces, that draw men 
together ; and that, in the long run, these are the most compelling. 

That is the great fact that was proved by the risings of 1914. 
I ask you to consider why that was possible. Why was that possi- 
ble? Sir Edmund Walker briefly intimated that there had been 
a change in imperial policy since 1776 — a change, a vast change. 
In those days the thought of empire was a thought more or less 
of self-interest, trade, commerce. Those days went by. Your 
fathers on this side fought not for trade, not for commerce. 
They underwent great sufferings ; they brought upon themselves 
heavy expenses ; they endured trials over a great series of years ; 
and were led by one of the greatest statesmen of the world. Why? 
For an idea; for something intangible, something invisible, that 
one section of Britain did not at that moment recognize ; a section 
of Britain that was incompetent and that, unfortunately, was 
directed by incompetents both at home and abroad at that time, 
and that would not listen to the wiser men of Britain, its Burke 
and Chatham and dozens of other wise men of Britain, who said, 
"You are not treating your sons as Britons should be treated." 
They would not listen. You rose as Britons, and of course you 
got your rights after a long struggle. 

Now, that whole policy changed and a new era entered and 
new men came into control, and the circle of government widened 
year after year in Britain, and Britain became a great democracy 
and was led, in the earlier and in the middle part of the century 
by men of great power. 

What was happening to the north of you ? You did not know. 
It is only a few years back, really, that you have turned your 
gaze to the north, and many changes were taking place in our 
northern country. Our fathers and grandfathers were doing 



CANADA IN THE WAR 301 

things that they did not realize the value of or the extent of or 
the importance of. Who were these people? Some of them had 
come over from here. Many others had come from Britain, 
silently come across from Britain, bringing with them the ideas 
that were vibrant in Britain with new life, ideas of self-govern- 
ment and of democracy and of the power of the people. 

That class of people came into Canada and when they came 
they said, "We must in Canada have the same privileges that our 
brothers have in the old land. We haven't changed our nature ; 
we haven't changed our character." They demanded that those 
privileges be given them, and there was in Canada for many 
years a very stern and prolonged struggle for responsible gov- 
ernment, different from yours. I shall refer to it in a moment. 
Now, our fathers were earnest men who knew what they wanted ; 
they knew their ideas and were bound to have them; but they 
said, "We will not leave Britain; we will cling to Britain, and 
Britain will, before long, recognize the justice of our demands. 
She did not recognize it before." 

Fortunately a change had come and a new conception of 
empire was growing, and men of great power were in control. 
Britain sent to Canada three great governors, Lord Durham, 
Lord Sidell and Lord Elgin, and those men were sympathetic 
and led the Canadians. And there were at home in Britain fine 
men of sympathy in control, and Canada got responsible govern- 
ment. What was responsible government? Responsible govern- 
ment was the government that allowed our fathers to direct their 
own affairs at home, believing that our government at home for 
its own home affairs should be responsible to its own people, that 
we should control ourselves absolutely, and utterly. 

If you had understood what had been going on in Canada, 
there would not have been so many people from the United States 
saying in the last twenty-five years that they could not under- 
stand why we in the north did not assert our liberty and escape 
from the trammels of governmental direction in Britain. I have 
heard that again and again. The reason was that we did not need 
to. We had free government. Our fathers struggled for it. 
Responsible government was granted, and we have to-day a de- 
mocracy that is absolutely in control of its own home affairs and a 
government that is directly responsible to the people and respon- 
sive to the needs of the people continually. 

Now, this grew ; and it was on the struggles that our fathers 
went through in Canada that the British Empire has been builded ; 
because what we got in Canada has been given to every other 
part; and the reason of the loyalty of every part is that there 
is absolute confidence in every part towards the mother country. 



302 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

At home we are free, absolutely free ; we do as we will, without 
let or hindrance; and we know that we have been generously 
treated. 

Therefore, when there is a chance to maintain the principles 
on which we live, and when there is some danger lest the liberty 
for which we have struggled and which we now enjoy, lest that 
liberty should be defeated in the world, our people rise, not to 
defend England — I don't think we ever thought, in the begin- 
ning of the war, that England was going to be beaten — we went 
and stood by her side in France because we Canadians said, ''We 
will have the privilege of defending with you the kind of govern- 
ment and life that we enjoy and that must not disappear from the 
world." That was the reason. 

Now, do you see that, without knowing it, we have come into 
a new conception of empire? It is no longer the old matter of 
trade and commerce. Why, we have protection in Canada, and 
England had free trade! It is not a matter of trade and com- 
merce, but something far deeper, — a new imperial conception. 
What? That the English-speaking, overseas dominions, to- 
gether with the mother-country, are to stand side by side for the 
protection of a civilization. What kind of a civilization? The 
civilization that we have inherited for over a thousand years, of 
constantly growing, widening liberty, a newer understanding of 
freedom, and of the sweep and scope of laws. These are the 
things that we believe it is our part to maintain. 

Are we going to force them on the world like a new "Kultur ?" 
Not at all ; but we say they must not disappear from the world, 
and we believe they are of such potency within themselves, that, 
give the idea a chance, let it not be smothered out by force, and 
the idea has in it the vitality which will soon kindle new torches 
here and there in the darkness of the world, and the world will 
become illuminated almost automatically. We simply say, "Give 
it a chance; do not let it be killed out." That is the new idea 
of our civilization, a moral force that will sweep the world 
through and will illuminate the world by its own inherent power. 

Now comes the new day. I am not going to speak about the 
future of the empire. There are a great many difficulties ahead of 
us, among them, foreign policy and defense, how far we can have 
centralized government. Those are things that we Canadians 
are thinking a great deal about. 

Now comes the year 1917 and you come in. What does that 
mean? It means that another English-speaking democracy has 
recognized what we recognized, and is standing side by side with 
us for the same principles. I say a different kind of democracy. 
We are a democracy with responsible government, a government 



CANADA IN THE WAR 303 

that is very susceptible to the will of the people. Your democracy 
was the most remarkable democracy at the time that the world 
had ever seen, by reason of the fact that after you had won your 
liberties, you proceeded to make a written constitution, and to 
interpret that constitution in a very conservative way. The re- 
sult has been that you are one of the most conservative democ- 
racies, if not the most conservative democracy in the world. 
You have had a great respect for law, a wonderful respect for 
law, and your lawgivers in your Congress cannot go too fast, 
lest your Supreme Court steps in and says "We have the last word 
on some of these things ; you must listen to us." You have learned 
great respect for law in this country; so much so that I think 
sometimes it is giving you a little trouble in some places. 

But it is another kind of democracy; a democracy based on 
the conception that law and order are supreme. And I 
think you have the same idea in the back of your minds that we 
Britains have in the back of our minds, that law and order have 
something in them that is more than human, that there is an 
order that is supreme and divine, and that behind society there 
is a law that cannot be tampered with; otherwise, tampering 
brings disaster. That is in the minds of us all. 

Here then we have two great democracies standing side by 
side ; you, on the whole, more conservative ; we, with our re- 
sponsible government, working out in our own way the problems 
before us. Why do we stand side by side? We stand side by 
side for this reason, that we have come to recognize that the dif- 
ferences that kept us apart in the past are differences that shrink 
into insignificance when once the underlying civilization that is 
common to us is challenged; the underlying civilization based 
upon liberty, self-determination, a broadening freedom, a recog- 
nition of law and order and of the necessity of righteousness 
prevailing among the peoples of the world — doing the right thing 
by the peoples of the world. 

Those are the underlying principles. We have all come far 
short of them again and again in the past; but they are the 
underlying principles of our constitutions and of our society, 
and we have said that these things must be preserved. And 
just as we stood by Britain and France to preserve them three 
years ago, so now you are saying, or have said a year ago, "In 
view of the increasing pressure that has come, in view of the 
increasing menace that is facing the world, we too must stand 
by you for this one purpose, not to force our will upon the world, 
not at all ; not to constrain others to do as we will have them do ; 
but to say to the world, These principles, this civilization, that 
has made us what we are, cannot be stifled ; this civilization must 



304 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

remain in the world, and it must have a chance in the world, and 
we will band together until that fact is put beyond dispute.' " 
That is a very, very vital fact that we have been facing, and it 
has had a wonderful effect upon us. Just to think of the two 
speeches that were delivered about a month ago, by your great 
President who, I think, is to-day the greatest statesman of the 
world, your President and Mr. Lloyd George. Just think of 
those two speeches. One after the other saying virtually the same 
thing to the whole wide world. When a common utterance like 
that has once been made, the world can never be the same as it 
has been before. When people speak what is in their hearts, 
they are not the same as they were before they uttered what they 
were thinking; and now, out before the world, your conscience 
and your soul and our conscience and our soul have been given 
expression, and we can never be what we were before. And, 
as the result of recognizing that we are so profoundly similar, 
that the foundations of our life go down and that we draw our 
sustenance from the same underlying substance and sub-soil, 
recognizing that, we shall develop, I believe, into richer and 
richer and more luxurious life, side by side, two branches of a 
great modern, English-speaking democracy, how close, who can 
say, in the future; but I believe remaining distinct, you with 
your type of democracy through your history, and we with another 
type of democracy through our history ; but standing side by side 
as English-speaking people, will understand one another as never 
before. 

I think the fact that we are your neighbors, so near that we 
have come to you and have learned so much from you in the 
past, knowing more of you than you know of us, rejoicing in 
your success and in your growth, that we, your neighbors, possibly 
may help you to understand the part of the English-speaking 
democracy with which we are more closely associated, and we can 
perhaps help our kinsfolk who are so close to us to understand 
a little better what you are thinking and what you are aiming at, 
because we have had the privilege of living side by side with you 
in such uninterrupted intercourse over such a long period of 
years. 



FOUR : BY SIR WILLIAM MULOCK, LL.D. 

First Chief Justice, Exchequer Division of the High Court 
of Justice 

I am an "extra" on this programme and therefore have had 
no opportunity of preparing an orderly speech ; but, at the same 



CANADA IN THE WAR 305 

time, I can speak from the fullness of my heart when I express 
my grateful appreciation of the honor of being present here 
to-day and meeting so many of the splendid citizens of this 
country. 

I listened with deep interest to the valued, instructive and 
patriotic speech of my fellow-townsman, Sir Edmund Walker. 
I don't know that I ever listened to an address more full of meat 
than that speech, and so appropriate. And I hope you will par- 
don me, a Canadian, in paying this tribute to one of whom 
Canadians are so proud. I can imagine great good resulting in 
a country governed by public opinion, from the meetings of citi- 
zens in the form of clubs and interchanging ideas. There we 
all meet on the same plane, be it this, that or the other club, in 
Canada or in the United States. Men of high and men of low 
degree, we are all standing on the same platform ; like the pump- 
kin pie that we partook of a moment ago, no upper crust to it ! 
We are here to form public opinion. And why is it necessary? 
Because, as Sir Robert Falconer said a moment ago, the two coun- 
tries respond readily to public opinion. Governments come and 
governments go, in response to that opinion. That being so, how 
important it is in the welfare of a country that there should be 
an educative, sound public opinion, and is there any better school 
for the development of that condition than these societies, these 
organizations, of which this is a splendid type? 

You have heard a great deal of Canada. If I had said what 
Sir Edmund Walker said — now I am going to turn on him for a 
moment — you will think us a wonderful people when he told us 
that our armies were manned by the young men of Canada and 
our munitions factories were manned by the women ! However, 
it represents a united people, the men and the women combined. 
And again to refer to Canada, and I have said I would not refer 
to it, but Canada fills such a large place in the Canadian heart, 
you get away from it for a while, but you come back to it ; and so 
I come back to say that notwithstanding the fact that we don't all 
speak the English language, — there are many who speak the 
French language — we are all British in sentiment, and there is no 
danger to Canada from our French-Canadian population. They 
will prove a source of strength in this war as they have in other 
wars, and it is well for us never to forget that we owe a great 
deal to the French-Canadian people. 

I can say, in a word, there would have been no British flag 
in North America to-day but for the French-Canadian people 
many years ago. 

Now, as to our relations, it is true that we are two separate 
nations, but we two separate nations are one people. The liberty 



306 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

that you fought for a hundred and thirty years ago is as dear to 
the nations of the world to-day as it was to the Thirteen Colonies 
in the New England States. It seems a curious and yet a natural 
thing that a free country is able to produce the men that are re- 
quired for the occasion. In your great crisis you produced your 
George Washington. Although you had not, in one sense, your 
freedom, yet your aspirations in that direction bore fruit. It gave 
forth Washington and the other great men who laid the founda- 
tions of this great Republic. 

At that same time England had not free constitutional gov- 
ernment. It may be a coincidence, but we had a mad king. Go 
across the Atlantic to-day and you have a nation — the German 
nation is said not to possess the blessings of free government, and 
a similar coincidence — they have a mad Kaiser ! 

A little further on you had another crisis in your history, and 
it gave you that great statesman of immortal memory too, 
Abraham Lincoln. 

The third great crisis has come in your history. The man 
of the day as a rule receives limited, scant justice from the hands 
of his own people; but I was rejoiced to see with what unanimity 
you applauded the mention of your splendid, patriotic President, 
President Wilson. 

I will not detain you any further. No ; I am not going to tres- 
pass. I have only one observation to make. It is this: that we 
as one people, though separated by the international boundary 
line and by two flags, yet rejoice in one common ancestry; we 
are bound together by the ties of friendship, by a common lan- 
guage, by a common literature ; we trace our origins politically 
from what we now are proud to call "Great Britain, the Mother 
of Free Institutions," and when I come up your harbor, coming 
across the Atlantic, and my eyes fall upon the Statue of Liberty 
there, my mind goes back always in gratitude to Great Britain — 
you will pardon me for giving expression to the sentiment, I am 
sure — for having pointed out, lighted our pathways in our journey 
towards a higher and a better civilization. 

And so we two nations must now, I think, instead of looking 
backward to see wherein we differed in the past, study the present 
and future, to see where there may be the closer bonds of union 
between us. We have wiped out, I hope, from every school book 
in our land every unkind or unfair reference to our neighbors 
and I know that you have done it in your country as well. We 
will never be in the future what we have been in the past. We 
shall always be one people in heart, bound together by sympathy, 
one great America, to overthrow, either to-day or to-morrow, 
whenever he raises his head, the god of might, and establish in 



CANADA IN THE WAR 307 

his place freedom, civilization, as we conceive it, upon enduring 
foundations. 



FIVE: BY REVEREND ALLAN MACROSSIE, D.D. 

I have lived here twenty-five years, and I think I know a 
little of the temperament of New York men. I heard a man 
say a few minutes ago, "I have stood now all that I can stand; I 
have learned so much that I can't stand any more." 

I think I know a little bit about Canada. I happened to be 
in the city of Kingston, at the Kingston Club, talking with a 
group of my Canadian friends ; one of them was the Dean of the 
School of Theology of the Kingston University, whose son was a 
Rhodes Scholarship man, who was about to return. to Canada, and 
I said to him, "Are you not paying a pretty good price ?" "Price?" 
said he ; "my youngest boy goes over in the fall." 

I turned to his brother-in-law, Judge Farrell of Moose jaw, 
Canada. I said, "Alex, where are the boys !" "Oh," he said, 
"they are in France." 

I turned to a representative in Parliament, Mr. Nichol, and 
said, "What about that boy of yours?" I knew he was in the 
Princess Patricia at eighteen years of age, had been wounded and 
was about to go back. Said his father, "You could not keep him 
here." 

I turned to Senator Richardson and asked him about his boy. 
He said, "He is with the Princess Pat men ; he was wounded and 
will return. The younger lad is out there somewhere on a sub- 
marine destroyer." 

When you have men so glad, so proud, so normal, with all 
they have across the seas, you can appreciate the spirit in which 
these gentlemen have represented Canada. 

It was my very great privilege when in Canada to receive a 
cablegram telling me to go at once to England and from England 
to go to France. It was an easy thing to fall in love with the 
British Tommy; but our American soldiers hardly understand 
him ; yet they respect him most highly. 

As for the Australian, that great, big scrappy fellow, I think 
our men like him very, very much. 

As to the New Zealander, they admire him, he works so per- 
fectly with every other man. 

As to the Scotchman in his kilts, when you know him, of 
course, you understand him ; but you have to have a little Scotch 
blood in you to know him. 



808 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

I saw one day some of our American soldiers coming down 
the street, and I heard the band playing, "Mine Eyes Have Seen 
the Glory of the Coming of the Lord," and how those British 
soldiers did cheer ! I noticed that they cheered and cheered and 
cheered, again and again. 

All the days I was in London, whenever you saw soldiers to- 
gether, you would find, for some reason or other, our Americans 
with the Canadian men. There is something about us so closely 
related to each other that we instinctively know each other. Of 
course, you appreciate the fact that over in France we have very 
much to do for the French people and for the French soldiers, 
and the British understand that. They know that we have a 
great debt to pay to France. They appreciate it. They know. 
They sympathize. They know that we are "over there" trying 
to bear the burdens of France for the sake of France and for the 
sake of the Allies. 

It was my privilege to spend an afternoon with General 
Pershing. He spoke of what the American Red Cross was doing 
for the mutilated soldiers of France, and for the women and 
children. You must not forget that these French soldiers were 
holding the line for us these fall and winter months. By next 
spring we shall have five or six hundred thousand soldiers, thor- 
oughly equipped and well trained, and then by that time, if we 
can keep up the morale of the French soldiers, with our allies, the 
British and the French, we shall at last go through the German 
line and bring the Kaiser to his knees. 

But there is just one thing that troubled me very much, and 
that is, in reading the papers of late, to see that our American 
soldiers are pretty well down the line. I think the papers said 
Lorraine. We can see the value of it, that if it is true that so 
many of our men are fairly near Lorraine, and if it should be 
true that there might come a drive in that direction, I can see what 
that would mean for France. I read that Great Britain had taken 
over some of the French line. I had seen in the early summer 
very much going on at St. Quentin, and when I read this morning 
that American soldiers were up in the Champagne and in the 
Chemin des Dames, and that they were very near the British, I 
said to myself : "I very much wish that in some way General 
Haig and General Petain and General Pershing could get together, 
and if only those Canadian lads could come down near the Chemin 
des Dames and the American soldiers get up in that direction, to 
my way of thinking, this country would rejoice beyond measure 
if we can get somewhere near those Canadian soldiers. Our men 
will certainly be at their very best, and certainly, so far as we are 
concerned, we shall expect them to do even more than their best. 



CANADA IN THE WAR 309 



SIX: BY THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 

This is very gratifying and very embarrassing. I heard Sir 
William Mulock say he was an "extra." I must be a "last min- 
ute!" 

I am very glad that the Chairman, in referring to Sir William 
Mulock, alluded to the reduction in the rate of postage. 

We have heard a good deal of the splendid spirit that exists 
between Canada and the United States ; about not only the de- 
lightful relations between the United States and Canada, but also 
the mutual benefit derived from that happy state of things, and 
we are apt to take very good things as a matter of course. I 
suppose some younger generation would think if we could send 
a letter to Great Britain for the small sum of two cents, why then 
we ought to ; this in the same spirit as that of the Irishman who, 
when he saw the millions of tons of water that poured over 
Niagara, remarked, "Well, what's to hinder it ?" We may call Sir 
William Mulock the "father of the penny postage." Looking back 
for many years, the penny postage was heralded as one of the 
greatest reforms in many a year, and I remember seeing a picture 
where Sir Rowland Hill was shown as the author of the penny 
postage in England, and I say that Sir William Mulock is a sec- 
ond Sir Rowland Hill. 



NINTH DISCUSSION 

MARCH SECOND, I918 
THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 



ONE: BY HONORABLE JAMES M. BECK 

When I had the privilege and honor of visiting the western 
front in the Summer of 1916, I was deeply impressed with the 
abiding confidence which the two commanders of the French and 
British armies felt in a conclusive victory on the battlefield in 
the following Spring. At that time the French were not only 
holding their own at Verdun, but slowly pushing the invaders 
back, while on the Somme Sir Douglas Haig's armies were daily 
thrusting their foes from seemingly impregnable positions. The 
feeling was general that the end was in sight, and I can no better 
illustrate this than by stating a remark that General Joffre made 
to me at the end of an interview which I was greatly privileged 
to have with him at his headquarters at Chantilly. This was early 
in August, 1916, and he asked me when I was returning to Amer- 
ica. I replied, "Within a few days," and then, with a quiet smile, 
he added as an adieu, "Come back in twelve months and the war 
will be over." 

Were these two great commanders cheating themselves with 
vain delusions? Were they simply indulging in idle boasts in 
the manner of the Homeric heroes? Both General Haig and 
General Joffre are men of very few words. They never indulge 
in vain prophecies, and neither of them has in the slightest degree 
the spirit of boasting. Their confident belief in an early victory 
was based upon seemingly sure premises and sound reasoning. 
They knew that on the western front they had at length attained 
a manifest superiority in artillery, man power, and airplanes. 
This they had demonstrated on the Somme with six months of 
almost consistent victories. What is more important, they knew 
that Russia's mighty armies were being slowly equipped by the 
material resources of Great Britain, France, Japan, and the 
United States, and that by the Spring of 1917 they would be in 
a position of overwhelming superiority on the eastern front. They 
knew that the Russians were good soldiers and had as able gen- 
erals as those of any country, for the greatest victories, except 
that of the Marne, which had been won for the Allies, had been 
those of the Russian armies. Twice they had invaded Eastern 

313 



314 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Prussia and twice they had swept in triumph through Galicia and 
reached the crest of the Carpathians, from which they could view 
the plains of Hungary. They had suffered only two disasters, the 
one at Tannenberg through either the stupidity or the treachery 
of their generals, and the other at Donajec, where, through the 
failure of the Russian Government, either through maladminis- 
tration or treachery, to forward the necessary supplies or muni- 
tions, they had been forced back. All this was being remedied 
in the manner I have indicated, and there was, therefore, a very 
resonable expectation that in the Spring of 19 17 the Teutonic 
armies would face forces both on the eastern and western fronts 
of such manifest superiority as to justify but one conclusion as 
to the result on one or the other front. The military power of 
Germany would be crushed. It seemed to be written in the stars. 

All these expectations have been falsified. The mighty Rus- 
sian Army, in itself once potentially capable of defeating both 
Germany and Austria, has crumbled into cureless ruin, and when 
we ask the reason for this most terrible debacle in the history of 
the world we find the answer in the recent lament of the Russian 
Prime Minister, Lenine. when he said that the suicide of Russia, 
who, like the blinded Samson has pulled down the stately pillars 
of civilization, was due primarily and chiefly to the spirit of doc- 
trinaire phrase making and visionary pacificism. To this he at- 
tributes the ruin of his country, and only a few days ago he again 
reproached the grandiloquent orators of the Bolshevist parties by 
attacking the "intoxication of revolutionary phraseology," and 
adding: "I am waging a war against revolutionary phrase mon- 
gering, which I consider the greatest danger to our party, and 
therefore, to the revolution. The bitter truth is now plain to 
everybody. . . . We shall create a revolutionary army by work 
and organization, not by means of high-sounding words and 
phrases, like the eloquence of those who, in January, tried for one 
month without doing anything to prevent our troops from run- 
ning away.'' 

I have ventured to call your attention to the disintegrating 
force of phrase making, for, in my judgment, not only Russia, 
but the entire cause of the Allies, the holiest for which men ever 
fought, is threatened by the tendency to convert the sacred cause 
into mere formulas and phrases. 

To denounce all phrases in a protest against phrase making 
would be to repeat the very folly against which the warning is 
made, for there are phrases and phrases. If an idea is, as it often 
may be, greater than an army, and more potential for good or evil, 
then the phrase in which it is clothed must have a vital force. 
Carlyle said of Luther that his words were in themselves battles, 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 815 

and again and again in the history of the world a whole situation 
has been illuminated with a phrase, more potent in carrying a 
nation to victory than an army corps. The rallying cry of the 
French Revolution, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," has had 
its stimulating effect upon France for generations, and the great 
victory on the Marne was won not merely by the masterly genius 
of Joffre, but because the French poilu, even after his terrible 
retreat from the Sambre and Meuse to the Marne, had not lost 
his morale. This was chiefly due to the noble spirit of the fra- 
ternity, the comradeship which made officers and privates brethren, 
that enable France to turn upon the invader and sweep him back 
fifty miles to the Aisne. 

When a corrupt French Government a century ago refused 
just reparation to America unless its officials were bribed, the 
phrase of an American Envoy, "Millions for defense and not a 
cent for tribute," epitomized in a few words the whole situation 
and the justice of our cause. 

Lincoln's phrase, in his Gettysburg speech, that "Government 
for the people, of the people, and by the people should not perish 
from the earth," gave eloquent expression to the passion and 
sense of union which carried us through the Civil War. Wilson's 
statement that we must "Make the world safe for democracy" has 
vital force, for it emphasizes one issue of this world war, plain 
to all classes of Americans, and that is that in this age of democ- 
racy we do not propose to have a Hohenzollern autocrat dominate 
the destinies of this fair world. 

There are phrases and phrases. "Too proud to fight" was, 
we will all now agree, a deadly phrase. It not only humiliated 
this nation in the eyes of the world, but it sapped the spirit of the 
people by presenting to them the ideal of a false pacifism. An 
even deadlier phrase was "Peace without victory," which sowed 
the seeds of disintegration not only in Russia, but in the peoples 
of its Allies. These unfortunate platitudes may well be forgotten 
in the later utterances of the President when in felicitous lan- 
guage he held up to the American people the great ideal of justice. 
Thus, in his great speech to Congress of last December, President 
Wilson nobly summarized the whole situation as follows : 

"We are the spokesmen of the American people, and they have 
a right to know whether their purpose is ours . They desire peace 
by the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister 
forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible. They are 
impatient with those who desire peace by any sort of compromise 
— deeply and indignantly impatient — but they will be equally im- 
patient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our 
objects are and what we are planning for in seeking to make a 



316 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

conquest of peace by arms. I believe I speak for them when I say 
two things : first, that this intolerable Thing, of which the Mas- 
ters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of com- 
bined intrigue and force, which we now see so clearly as the Ger- 
man Power, a Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for 
covenanted peace, must be crushed, and if it be not brought utterly 
to an end, at least shut out from the friendly intercourse of the 
nations." 

These were noble utterances, voicing the true spirit of the best 
American sentiment, and admirably served to defeat the latent 
spirit of a false pacificism, which is our chief danger. They up- 
hold to the American people a high ideal. They nerve us to our 
great task. The Thing "must be crushed." 

The leader of a people, who is called upon to voice their senti- 
ments and direct their energies, has an onerous task and a heavy 
responsibility. He may make or mar the power of the nation. 
It will not do to say that this is a time for deeds and not for words, 
for that in itself is a phrase that is false through undue generaliza- 
tion, but no phrase or formula is valuable that does not square 
with the realities of the present and voice the true meaning of 
the people. Thus many phrases now in use, such as "the freedom 
of the seas" and the "right of self-definition" of peoples, are 
unfortunate because they do not represent realities. "The free- 
dom of the seas," so called, means the right of a neutral, immune 
from search, seizure, or capture, to sell goods to a belligerent. 
This right we challenged in our own Civil War, and if we had not 
denied the "freedom of the seas" the, Civil War would have been 
prolonged and the cause of the Union possibly defeated. We are 
denying now the right of neutral nations to ship goods to Ger- 
many, and thus our assertion of "the freedom of the seas" not only 
wounds a faithful ally, but is contrary to our present and past 
policies. We do not propose that neutral nations shall for gain 
sustain Germany and thus by prolonging the war make greater 
sacrifices of our lives and treasure. 

"The right of self-definition" is equally misleading. We did 
not give to the Southern States in our Civil War the right to form 
a separate Government, nor did we apply principles of self-defini- 
tion when we acquired Florida, Louisiana, Caliornia, Alaska, the 
Philippine Islands, and Porto Rico. Why, then, suggest as a 
formula of peace a principle which, while it upholds an idea of 
some value, does not represent the realities of life or the policies 
of America? The map of the world cannot be determined upon 
the basis of any such generalization. This is indeed a time of 
"blood and iron." Only realities count and sounding platitudes, 
which do not represent our true purpose and meaning, tend to 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 317 

obscure judgment and paralyze the nation's will. Certainly they 
lead us nowhere. 

Again, an effective phrase by the spokesman of a nation 
must represent the highest aspirations of the people. While the 
"peace without victory," which sought to compromise the world's 
greatest war by leaving the main issue unsettled, was not thus 
representative, President Wilson's later declaration, that the peo- 
ple of this country were "impatient, deeply and indignantly im- 
patient, with those who desired peace with any sort of compro- 
mise," and his further declaration that this was a war to the 
death against the imperial Government of Germany, a "Thing 
without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace," 
expresses in the most virile phrase the sentiment which recon- 
ciles the American people to the inevitable sacrifices of blood and 
treasure. Had Kerensky and Trotzky, instead of weakening the 
morale of the Russian people by the most visionary idealism, 
simply asserted that the honor of Russia was pledged to a war 
to a finish, and that to desert her allies, who came into the war 
in response to her appeal for help, was to play the part of Judas 
Iscariot, then the Russian revolution might not have suffered 
so pitiable a collapse. "Words, words, words !" defeated Russia, 
not the military prowess of Prussia. As all bellicose phrases 
are mischievous in the period of a just peace, similarly all paci- 
fist platitudes are mischievous in the death grapple of war. If 
a pedestrian is attacked by a footpad with a bludgeon, he does 
not in the heat of the struggle for life discuss the virtue of 
honesty, nor does a householder, when he confronts a burglar in 
the dead of night, and knows that it is the burglar's life or his 
own that is at stake, waste his breath with discussing during 
the death grapple the ethical basis of property rights or the 
problems of penology. 

It is for this reason that I, personally, feel constrained to 
question the wisdom of the recent peace parleys, especially when 
conducted at a time when the enemy is flushed with victory. 
Our President has said that the Imperial German Government 
is a "Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for cove- 
nanted peace." That is the deliberate conviction of the American 
people ; if it was not, they would not be in the war with the degree 
of unanimity that has confounded our enemies and surpassed 
even the most sanguine expectations of those who, like myself, 
wished from the beginning that our country would abandon its 
policy of neutrality. The Government of Berlin has not changed. 
If it was last December "without capacity for a covenanted 
peace," why, then, should our Government now parley with Ber- 
lin and Vienna, and why whittle down the great cause of punitive 



818 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

justice to fourteen formulas, some of which are vague and 
illusory in meaning, some altogether admirable, and at least one 
of which was against our historic policies and the best interests 
of our allies? 

I fully recognize that the President has greater sources of 
knowledge than are available to any of his fellow citizens. I 
do not question his wholehearted purpose to carry our war to a 
successful conclusion, but he is surrounded with influences that 
do not regard this war as a holy crusade for liberty and justice, 
but as an unfortunate quarrel between equally well-meaning 
nations, which by the requisite amount of diplomatic finesse can 
be brought to a conclusion by a shifty compromise. If the 
President will eliminate from his councils the intriguers, pacifists, 
doctrinaires, and the other intellectual Bolsheviki, he will confirm 
the confidence which his countrymen have so fully and un- 
grudgingly given him. Party spirit is non-existent. The whole 
people are behind their chosen leader, but they want him to lead 
them to victory, not to a compromise. They will tolerate mis- 
takes, but not a retreat from our high emprise. 

While the value of President Wilson's speech on January 
8th, with its fourteen formulas, may be open to fair debate and 
a reasonable difference of opinion between men of equal patriot- 
ism and intelligence, yet his later speech of February nth, when 
the fourteen formulas were again whittled down to four ex- 
ceedingly vague formulas, does not seem to me to be open to 
such debate. Nothing more unfortunate has happened since 
we entered the war. It revives old doubts. It bewilders our 
judgment. It disturbs our morale. 

That these formulas tend to dissipate the great moral issues 
of the war into meaningless phrases can best be shown by the 
fact that the German Chancellor had no difficulty whatever in 
accepting them. Thus the statement that "each part of the final 
settlement must be based on the essential justice of that particular 
case" does not get the discussion of peace very far, for if we 
have learned anything in this war it is that the German concep- 
tion of justice is not that of the rest of the world. The state- 
ment that "peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about 
as pawns" is too vague for concrete application, as is the third 
formula, that territorial settlements are to be made "in the inter- 
ests and for the benefit of the population concerned." Here, 
again, Germany can accept the formula in principle, for, taking 
the specific instance of Poland, it would contend that from its 
standpoint the interests of the Polish population would be sub- 
served by German rather than by Russian rule. The nearest 
approach to a specific formula capable of concrete application, is 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 319 

the fourth, but its practical meaning is defeated by the proviso, 
for, while it says that "all well-defined national aspirations shall 
be accorded the utmost satisfaction," it is with the proviso that 
such recognition shall be "without introducing new or perpetuat- 
ing old elements of discord and antagonism." This certainly 
does not lead us very far, for taking the specific instance of 
Poland again, if the Allies in applying these formulas shall, as 
I fervently hope, seek to erect an independent Poland on its 
ancient historic lines by incorporating the present German and 
Austrian Poland, Germany would reply that to take a portion 
of Germany to reinstate the old nation of Poland would per- 
petuate an old element of discord, if it did not introduce a new 
one. 

It may be suggested that these formulas which are thus pro- 
posed to a Government characterized only last December as a 
"Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted 
peace," do no harm, but may do good in disintegrating the Cen- 
tral Powers. The more we depart from the great ideal of jus- 
tice, and attempt to reach an impossible ground between justice 
and injustice, the more we weaken our own cause and strengthen 
that of our enemies. 

The best way to win the war is to stop talking peace, and the 
surest way to lose it is to dissipate the energies of our people 
by premature parleys for peace, especially where they are on 
our own initiative and do not represent the judgment or wishes 
of our faithful allies, who for more than three years sustained 
without our aid the awful burden of the war. 

If the great quarrel between the Central Powers and the 
rest of the world shall be compromised by conventional formu- 
las and without punitive justice, then the dead will have died in 
vain. Such possibility fills men of vision with the gravest concern 
as to the portentous possibilities of the present peace parleys. . . . 

I fully recognize that the President has an intimate knowledge 
of undisclosed facts that are not accessible to his fellow citizens. 
We must assume that he has, by reason of his larger knowledge 
of facts, a wider vision. He has doubtless carefully considered 
the grave question whether peace parleys may not demoralize the 
Central Powers in their present hour of temporary success far 
less than the temporarily baffled Allies. Time alone will tell, 
and it may be premature to pass judgment upon the wisdom of 
our President's very skillful parleying with the enemy. If he 
succeeds he will be, beyond question, the first statesman of the 
age and a masterful figure in the greatest crisis of history. If 
he fails, and the right arm of the Allies shall be weakened by 
the "give and take" of this diplomatic duel, then his will be a 



320 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

very heavy responsibility. Our respect for his greater knowledge 
and larger vision makes us hope that, even though Berlin and 
Vienna are now decked with the flags of triumph, the present 
time for peace parleys may not be as unpropitious as would other- 
wise seem probable. 

In this connection it is to be noted that the Kaiser suggests no 
formulas and makes no promises. Speaking a few days ago to 
the Burgomaster of Hamburg on the occasion of the treaty of 
peace with the Ukraine Republic, the Kaiser said: 

"We desire to live in friendship with neighboring peoples, 
but the victory of the German armies must first be recognized. 
Our troops under the great Hindenburg will continue to win it. 
Then peace will come." 

I confess there is to me much that is practical in what the 
Kaiser has thus said. The best way to secure peace is to win 
the war. With my more limited vision I greatly fear that until 
the war is won no satisfactory terms can be arrived at by com- 
promise. My chief concern lies in the fact that in the peace 
parleys there seems to be a notable crescendo in the note of 
expediency and a corresponding diminuendo in the note of 
justice. 

The heavenly vision of punitive justice, which sent millions 
to battle in 19 14 and 191 5, seems to be fading from the eyes 
of men even as the vision of the first Christmas night faded from 
the eyes of the shepherds. No longer do we hear, at least in- 
sistently, either from London, Rome, Paris or Washington, the 
statement that the Allies will not make any peace with the arch 
criminals, the Hohenzollern regime. Our allies are modifying 
their high and noble aims to harmonize them with our attempt 
to compromise the quarrel by an exchange of formulas with a 
power only last December characterized as not having sufficient 
honor for a "covenanted peace." No longer do we hear that the 
men who have violated international law, outraged the funda- 
mental properties of civilization, and reduced the morals of the 
twentieth century in the matter of war to those of the cave 
dweller, shall be tried and punished. 

Fortunately, as this is a war of peoples, so in a sense it can 
only be a treaty of peace by peoples, and while belligerency as a 
technical status may be ended by the exchange of ratifications, 
yet the peoples of England, France and the United States will 
not forget as long as any man now lives the shameful and count- 
less atrocities which have made this war the vilest and ghastliest 
tragedy that the world has ever known. The question rises above 
formulas, however adroitly phrased. It is, in its last analysis, 
one of moral psychology. 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 321 

Unless the Prussian is beaten and knows that he is beaten, 
all the dead will have died in vain, for even if a treaty of peace 
could be secured at this time that would be otherwise favorable 
to the Allies, but which left the Hohenzollern on his throne, as 
soon as Germany had recuperated its strength, as Prussia did 
under Frederick the Great, the life and death struggle between 
liberalism and autocracy would be renewed. 

If we are to have a liberal civilization, there is no room for 
the Hohenzollern in it. With him or his brood on the throne 
the rule of reason will cease in international affairs and the only 
right will be that of the powers of destructive chemistry. Civili- 
zation would then be a hell, with the Kaiser and his successors 
as the possible overlords. 

The sacred cause of justice — punitive justice — must not be 
compromised. 



TWO: BY DOCTOR D. J. McCARTHY 

Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, University of Pennsyl- 
vania. 

Following Mr. Beck's remarks and with convictions very 
much along the same lines, with the experience that, I take it, in 
this war, at least, has been rare, of fighting on both sides, fight- 
ing with the French and fighting in Germany against them, with 
that experience, I take it that I have possibly an insight and 
possibly a conviction about this war which comes from a matter 
of experience. 

I started in the war, I might say, possibly like a pacifist. All 
we Irish are pacifists until the fight begins ! I went into the 
French lines, and I don't know of anything that impressed me 
philosophically as quite so silly as the settlement of an argument 
by physical warfare. It appeared to me academic to settle an 
argument by the ruthless destruction of men by the hundreds of 
thousands. It seemed to me silly and foolish and ridiculous to 
attempt to adjust in that manner something which could be 
settled by five men sitting around a table — the argument as it 
existed at that time. But, I had not been in Germany at that 
time. After I had spent most of a year in Germany, the war 
was not silly and not ridiculous; to-day it is not silly; to-day 
it is not ridiculous; and, if conditions go on as they are, and if 
the American people do not wake up to this responsibility, to 
what this war and the military situation at the present time 
means, this war will go on for, not until next Fall, but for years. 



322 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

As Mr. Beck says, the impression you get from the training 
camp, from these men in khaki, that they will never get to France 
to fight, is wrong. What Mr. Beck knows and what I know and 
what those of us who have been in contact with the Russian 
situation know, is that to get a final decision over Germany is no 
child's play. The question which faces you and me and the 
American nation is not from the college man's standpoint, where 
you go for a hundred yards, or you go for a quarter-mile sprint, 
or you go for a mile. The supreme test that is going to come to 
the American people, the American people on whom the final 
decision from a military standpoint has been placed, is, whether 
it will go for a Marathon or not. That is the question that faces 
the American people to-day. 

I went into Germany with an academic interest in the war, 
with my sympathies with the French and with my sympathies with 
the ideals for which the French were fighting, and it didn't take 
me very long in Germany to realize what Germany stood for 
then and what she stands for now. The Minister of Foreign 
Affairs might say what he liked about foreign or neutral opinion ; 
he might give you promises galore, and the same thing might 
be given to you by von Bethmann-Hollweg ; but, gentlemen, it 
wouldn't count. The people who counted in Germany then and 
the people who count in Germany now are the twenty-one Army 
Corps Commanders. They are the Government of Germany; 
they have the say-so; and linked with those twenty-one Army 
Corps Commanders at that time and still linked with them was the 
so-called Seeks Verband, an organized government trust of every 
interest in Germany, and with them the Junkers ; and it did not 
make any difference to them what the Minister of Foreign Af- 
fairs or von Bethmann-Hollweg felt or said; it was what 
those twenty-one Army Corps Commanders felt and said; 
and you may play with words as von Hertling plays 
with words and formulas and what not ; but unless those twenty- 
one Army Corps Commanders subscribe to those conditions, there 
will be no peace and we in America must recognize that, that 
there is not going to be any peace, and we must prepare for it. 

If the war lasts five years it will be no surprise to me. It 
may be over in two or three years ; it may go on for five ; but 
we must face the issue. As Mr. Beck says, if it goes on for ten, 
it will go on. 

I came here to talk to you on the question of the German 
propaganda, of what it meant and what it stood for. Facing 
these twenty-one Army Corps Commanders of Germany a run- 
ning fight is going on for what is straight and right and humane 
toward the prisoners of war, for, in those long months, I came to 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 323 

realize what they stood for. A straight line from a military 
standpoint was a straight line, and it made no difference whether 
human rights or life stood in the way. It made no difference to 
them that the representatives of Germany had promised they 
would live according to the rules that they had subscribed to in 
the Hague Convention. 

Take the case of the Irish prisoners at Limberg, one of the 
seduction camps for those prisoners whom Germany hoped to 
lure away from their allegiance to the Allies. Here the Irish 
prisoners were segregated and at first given the best of treatment 
in every way. They sent Casement there, a privileged character, 
to do something for the entertainment and instruction of these 
Irish. The propaganda included many lectures on the history of 
Ireland. It was such an insult to the Irish intelligence that 
the second time he appeared in the camp to give his lectures he 
was licked and they had to give him a special guard, and at the 
end of several months, what was the result with these "ignorant 
Irish?" Out of those four of five thousand, only a pitiful 32 
were lured to Germany, and the Irish afterwards, in talking 
about it, didn't even have a sense of humor. When you tried 
to poke some fun at these 32, they would not even own them as 
Irish. They said they were "Scotch-Irish !" Renegade American 
Irish, as they said. They would not stand for them, and they 
took their pitiful whole of 32 "Scotch-Irish" up to Berlin, this 
wonderful brigade that was to fight for the Republic of Ireland, 
and what happened to it there? The first time it was given its 
liberty it got gloriously drunk and went down the Frederick 
Strasse, singing "God Save the King!" And then it underwent a 
sudden disappearance. I wanted to find out what became of it, 
and a German Foreign officer said, "We have the right to liberate 
prisoners if we so please;" and we said to him, "From our ex- 
perience in these prison camps, you may liberate them, but you 
must deliver them to us whenever we ask." They never dared to 
send those 32 Irishmen back to Limberg where essential justice 
would be meted out to them. 

The same thing happened at the military prison at Cologne. 
We inspected it, and there amongst that forlorn lot were men 
sentenced to 22 years imprisonment. I came to red-headed Irish- 
man and said, "What is the matter with you?" "Well, Doctor," 
said he, "I am here unjustly." "Why unjustly?" "Well," he 
said, "it's this sense of German justice." "What is the matter 
with German justice?" I asked. "Well," he said, "I was accused 
of assaulting and hitting the guard." I said, "Didn't you hit the 
guard?" "Well," he said, "the trouble is, at the trial the guard 
appeared against me at the court-martial, and his head was all 



324 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

bound up and they said to him, 'What happened?' and he said 
that I hit him and assaulted him and tried to escape;" and he 
said, "They took his word against mine when I denied it." I 
said to him, "Well, did you hit the guard?" He said, "Yes, I 
hit him — just once !" 

And then, when I told him I was Irish too ; that my name was 
McCarthy ; he said, "What's that ? Your name McCarthy ? My 
name is McCarthy too." Then he went on to tell me how it hap- 
pened. "It was just this way; I just hit him one wallop." That 
was the idea of the German sense of justice that the Irish had 
at Limberg. 

With the propaganda at the prison camp at Wunsdorf the 
Germans had better success. They got a hold of at least two 
thousand Mohammedans and Hindus, by housing them in what 
was in many ways the model camp of Germany. Eventually all 
the Mohammedans and Hindus were concentrated at this camp 
which was made an Oriental paradise and where their political 
persuasion met with a high degree of success. As I say, at least 
two thousand of them went over and fought with the Turks 
against the French with whom they had belonged. 

They dispersed most of these men out of these camps, and 
sent them to working camps, and at the working camps they 
kept them from contact with their people at home and refused 
to deliver to them the food packages from home. When the 
Irish showed the slightest resentment to this, they were bayo- 
neted. Once I came across two of these Irish prisoners who had 
been bayoneted and killed, and a postcard was sent back to the 
Irish village from which they came, saying they had died quietly 
in the hospital. Just as soon as the Mohammedans would fail 
them, they would get just exactly what the Irish at Limberg 
got. 

Then came the time in the German prison camp, when, ac- 
cording to the Hague Convention, an officer was not expected to 
work, and they became a problem to them. They said, "We will 
make him work." It was Belgium over again, and they picked 
out the worst camp in Germany and put over them the worst 
general they had. At the end of six or eight hours of inspection, 
you found conditions worse than those at Wittenberg, for vicious 
police dogs were let loose in these barracks and in the com- 
pounds at night. Whenever a man complained, he was put in 
close confinement, without air and without bed-clothes, and on a 
bread-and-water diet for three days. These men were actually 
at the point of revolution, facing the German bayonets. 

One went across the road and found there in crude barracks 
some three or four hundred of the more badly wounded prisoners 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 325 

of war, brought into those prison barracks without any nurses 
at all, with practically no doctors, with practically no X-ray 
apparatus, and no bandages, to help them; lying there on the 
crude bunks; nothing to eat but the dirty soup of the camp 
kitchen, these men with temperatures of 103 and 104, these men 
of the prison camp dying there. You would find one man with a 
dirty towel in his teeth in the convulsions of lockjaw. 

Up in the camp there was a lay reader of the Church of 
England who, when he wanted to go down and give dying con- 
solation to the dying men, was not permitted to because he could 
not show credentials that he was an ordained clergyman of the 
Church of England. 

The representatives of the French Army Corps said to me, 
"Doctor, what do you think ought to be done about this camp ?" 
"Well," I said, "there is only one thing to be done and that is to 
burn it down." I never believed that such a condition could 
possibly exist in a civilized community, and I said to him, "What 
are you going to do about it ?" He said, "I will report down at 
the Army Corps Command." I said, "Oh, no, you don't ; unless 
you give me assurances that all these conditions will be corrected, 
I will see that the world has another Wittenberg." 

Do you know Wittenberg? The world knows Wittenberg, 
where these fifteen thousand men were herded in a small com- 
pound surrounded by barbed wire. When the most contagious 
of diseases broke out, every single German got up and beat it 
out of that camp, left there, and left those men alone. You can 
imagine what would happen to you with this epidemic hitting 
you, without a bit of attention. I can imagine what happened in 
Wittenberg, and I saw the evidence. What did they do at Witten- 
berg? For six long months not a single German went inside 
of that camp to give a bit of aid to these hopelessly sick prisoners 
of war. Three slept on a mattress covered with lice, with this 
horrible disease — typhus — there. They took five British sol- 
diers, members of the British Army Corps — they had been hold- 
ing them there for months — they took five of them and dumped 
them into this camp at Wittenberg, and out of those five brave 
men dumped there, three of them died and two came out. And 
that was Wittenberg. There might be some possible excuse on 
account of the German medical profession and the German mili- 
tary being struck by panic, but there was no excuse for the other, 
because it was absolutely unadulterated cruelty. It simply passes 
human understanding for sheer unadulterated brutality. And 
I wrote again to the War Office and said, "This thing must never 
happen again. It simply must never happen again — such a con- 
dition of affairs." 



326 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Then cross the line (last summer) into Russia, and what do 
you find? Not this picayune propaganda trying to win a few 
Irish, Mohammedans and Hindus away from their allegiance 
to Great Britain and France, but the German propaganda play- 
ing with the fate, not only of Russia, but of the world. When 
you hear of German propaganda here, oh, it is a vague sort of 
thing — you don't half believe it because every factory that is 
burned they blame the Germans for it — but from March ioth 
of last year on, you could not move anywhere in Russia without 
putting your finger on German propaganda. You could not fol- 
low it, but it was doing its dirty work, and the manifold direc- 
tions in which German propaganda was doing that dirty work in 
Russia with the Russian Republic simply passes understand- 
ing. 

There were one million German and Austrian prisoners of 
war in Russia. Most of those one million prisoners of war in 
Russia were out in working camps, working with the Russian 
people, billeted with their employers. Well, after the revolution 
began, began the Socialist propaganda, and with it went the Ger- 
man propaganda, and by September of last year every German 
prisoner of war was a German propagandist, supplied with in- 
formation from the German propaganda. That was only a small 
part of it. The big part of it was the direction of the Russian 
Revolution from Germany. You may talk about the pages of 
history as much as you like. I always believed that these big 
revolutions ran their way, followed a certain definite course be- 
cause it was unavoidable; but when one gets close enough to 
this Russian Revolution one is convinced that revolutions do 
not run their own sweet way; that revolutions come directed to 
good or sinister purposes, just as you please; and, from the be- 
ginning of last May the German propaganda was directing the 
Russian Revolution and it is still doing it up to this very minute, 
and the most amazing thing about it is that it has completely 
succeeded in what it started out to do. And that success of the 
German propaganda was due to this wonderful Lenine that Mr. 
Beck thinks so highly of that he quotes him in an article about 
phrases and phrase-making, written when Lenine and the Inter- 
national Socialists were the phrase-makers of the time. 

Do you know how Lenine got into Russia? Anybody knows 
that to cross from one country which is an Allied country through 
any of the countries of the Central Powers is hard enough, it 
is an extremely difficult matter. You have to have your letters 
and your passports vised a half dozen times. But to cross 
from Germany into Switzerland, even for a diplomat, is a tre- 
mendous task; yet Lenine with his party of International So- 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 327 

cialists came from Switzerland into Germany through Denmark, 
over into Russia. How did he do it? Were the Germans so 
interested in the Russian Revolutionists that they would take a 
party of International Socialists, that they would take them into 
Russia in an easy, sociable way? No, gentlemen; they knew 
where money properly placed with their propaganda would even- 
tually reach; and when the Provisional Government started in 
the beginning, when Kerensky stopped doing the bidding of the 
Soviet and there came what Germany was looking for and the 
Provisional Government disappeared from the face of the earth ; 
then the Bolsheviki came on, and, true to their principles of 
international socialism, they moved forward to an international 
peace. 

It was following the principles of International Socialism, 
and those who are International Socialists and live up to their 
doctrine you can't find fault with ; but Germany knew what the 
International Socialists would do when they got in power. 

Now comes the next move in the game, and there comes this 
international condition in Russia. These Internationalists with 
the Bolsheviki are not going to be good neighbors with Germany. 
What is the next move with Germany? With the control of the 
Ukraine as a possible excuse, she moves forward into Russia 
itself. Now watch and see whether Russia will be ruled by a 
monarch sitting on the throne of Russia, and that monarch the 
wife of the Czar, a German. 

Last August there was a convention at Petrograd of the 
Thibetan Lamas, a branch of the Lamas of the East, everybody 
there except the Grand Lama, himself. What were these men 
of the East, these Lamas, doing in Petrograd at a time of tur- 
moil and revolution and war? They came to hold their con- 
ference in Petrograd in order to get some light on the Russian 
Revolution, and as GeorgeofT said, "This whole spirit has 
infected even our own Lamas. They are not willing to take the 
word of our Dalai-Lama any more. They must have their own 
committee; they must have their own say in the conduct of the 
church." 

That meant nothing except that it is a rather extraordinary 
situation ; but it had this significance, that you and I must keep in 
mind in connection with the present situation and in connection 
with what Germany is trying to do in Russia. It meant this, 
that the influence of the Russian Revolution, felt as it is even 
here now in a country at war, the Russian Revolution with the 
radical ideas that were permeating it, had spread down through 
Mongolia and through China; and, if the world is to be kept 
safe for democracy, you have got to keep your eyes on Russia 



328 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

and on China as well, because the Chinese Republic is in the 
same condition of dissolution as the Russian Republic. 

What is our concern at the present time with this German 
propaganda? We are concerned with it largely from our mis- 
takes of the past, and I think we are beginning to correct them. 
During those long nine months during which the German propa- 
ganda was defeating an army of over ten million men, when the 
German propaganda was completely licking an army of ten mil- 
lion men, what were the Allied diplomats doing to meet this 
issue? Are we so dumb and clumsy and inefficient that, with 
our wonderful understanding of life, that we sit down and let 
a situation of this kind develop before us, with the Ambassadors 
of Great Britain, of France and of Italy all doing the same 
thing ? 

And during these months when the Revolution was appar- 
ently directing itself but was really being directed by the German 
Government, and when Korniloff came along and said, "I 
will discipline this army," was there any attempt being made to 
direct the Russian Revolution along the line that it ought to go, 
except from Berlin? Not so that one could notice. And yet 
that must have had a tremendous interest for you and me and 
the American people. If Russia goes back to the Romanoffs, 
and the Romanoffs are controlled from Berlin, it won't be guard- 
ing the East by the head of the Persian Gulf and Bagdad; it 
will be guarding the East along the Trans-Siberian Railway and 
then you have Japan menaced, and you have Japan meeting the 
German peril. 

We are interested in the stabilizing of Russia in another 
direction, because Russia to-day is a tremendous potentiality. 
It is a country almost twice as large as ours. As you cross from 
one end of Russia to the other, you see this wonderful country 
with resources, if not double, at least nearly so, those of the 
United States ; with people only 30 per cent, educated, but a peo- 
ple giving them an art which equals that of the French artists; 
a music better than the German music so widely heralded; a 
literature which for its virility and extent equals the literature 
of any nation of the present time. Just think what will happen to 
Russia when those 70 per cent, of the Russians get even an 
elementary education ! Russia will then have an influencee on 
the world that neither you nor I can calculate. The Slavic mind 
with its tremendous potentiality is going to be a wonderful fac- 
tor in the future. 

Get the facts as they exist. The Russian army is out of the 
fight. It will not come back again. We can discount that. We 
can show an unselfishness which neither Great Britain nor France 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 329 

has shown toward a republic which is stabilizing itself, and which 
is doing the work of the world, because the present anarchy 
cannot last. And if we show that attitude toward Russia from 
the standpoint of our diplomacy, and not simply the attitude of 
the American people toward Russia now, Russia will not forget 
in the future who was her friend in the time of her tribulation. 
We have not forgotten what France did for us in our days of 
struggle. 

The whole situation from the Russian standpoint is such 
that it has altered the whole course of the war. Had the Russian 
army stayed in, had it been efficiently directed, had discipline 
been maintained in the Russian army — Haig was right, Joffre 
was right — certainly this year would have been the last year of 
the war and the Kaiser would have been defeated ; but here 
you have this whole blockade of Germany so necessary to human 
life in Great Britain, so necessary to the finances of Great Britain, 
practically all negatived if Prussia can get the wheat out of the 
Volga Region. But if the Allied countries are wise, if we can 
meet the German propaganda, if we show some statecraft in 
handling the Russian situation, it is is a long time between now 
and next September or October when the harvest comes in, and 
it is quite possible we may be able to get to rights, and Germany 
may have on her hands something which she did not calculate 
for in the beginning. 

The one deep feeling that every man who comes out of 
Europe with is not the feeling that peace is near, that peace 
is going to be here before midsummer or by September, but 
that it is an uncertain quantity, that if you are going to have 
a peace that is going to be lasting, that is going to mean any- 
thing, a peace in which the Allied diplomats are not going to 
be licked across the table even if Germany is not licked in the 
field, then it is going to be a long war. And the one thing that 
you have got to give credit to Washington for in its recent atti- 
tude towards this question is something which is not recognized 
generally in America, something which was not recognized in the 
chancelleries of Europe, and that is that Germany had calculated 
on winning the war at the peace table, on sitting down and say- 
ing, as their replies to these various state documents that have 
been presented to them, indicate, that the question of Alsace- 
Lorraine will be settled, but it is a personal matter between 
Germany and France ; that they will discuss with Great Britain 
the reconstruction of Belgium, the protection of the head of the 
Persian Gulf and the reconstruction of the Balkans; that at 
the peace table they would discuss with the United States the 
question of the freedom of the seas, and with Italy the question 



330 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

of the Trentino. Just as soon as you allow a situation of that 
kind to develop, the one principle recently enunciated from Wash- 
ington makes it perfectly clear that it does not make any difference 
whether the Bolsheviki make a peace with Germany or not; it 
does not make a bit of difference whether Turkey or Bulgaria 
make a separate treaty of peace with Greece; when a treaty of 
peace comes to be signed, it will be a question of what the rest of 
the world thinks of Germany and Austria. 

The rest of the world is going to tell Germany that for the 
future no one nation can have the right or ever be permitted to 
have the power to disturb the peace of the world in such a way 
as to create such a condition of affairs as has existed for the 
last three years. That must come and can only come from a con- 
cert of the Powers, from a determination of the different Powers 
to decide the question of what peace must be and what the peace 
demands are and must be ; and there must be no variation as to 
what London or Paris or Rome thinks. There must be a unity 
of ideas of what the whole world thinks of what Germany was, 
what Germany is, and what Germany has done, during the period 
of this war. 



THREE: BY REVEREND HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D. 

Captain of the pth Coast Artillery, U.S.A. 

There were a great many reasons why I was glad to 
accept an invitation to come here. I like to get into a 
crowd of men who hold Republican principles ; never more so 
than at this time. I love to come up to this old Republican Club 
where I have so many friends and where I have had so many 
good times; but I am free to say that the thing that led me to 
accept the invitation was that Mr. Beck was going to speak here 
this afternoon, and I think after you have listened to him to-day 
you can appreciate my feelings in this respect ; but he laid down 
the dictum that there has been too much talking in connection 
with the war, and I don't want to prove that his contention is 
true by a terrible example right here ; but, as a matter of fact, 
that is just about what I was going to say. I am simply going 
to do what any one can do under these circumstances, and say 
"Amen," a hearty "Amen" to what we have heard. I tell you, 
the Allied cause is suffering to-day from nothing so much as 
from the intemperance of speech. It is the talk in the capitals 
of the world that is doing more than the mud in Flanders to 
hold back the Allied offensive. It is the talk of peace as though 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 331 

it were a possibility before it had been settled at the point of the 
bayonet, as though it could come in any other way than by the 
power of the sword, that blunts the fighting courage of the men, 
that wet-blankets their powder and takes the edge off of their 
sword; and, mind you, this talk of peace always originates in 
Germany. There is where it starts. It is Germany who says, 
"Let us talk about peace," and then calmly rolls her tongue in 
her cheek and sits mum, while in every Allied capital the leaders 
of warfare rise in succession and begin to formulate their peace 
aims. They have Been formulated over and over gain in every 
one of the Allied countries; but, gentlemen, Germany has sat 
mum; she has played the game to the limit. She has never told 
the world and she does not propose to tell the world what 
her peace aims are. Von Herding and Czernin will keep the 
shuttle-cocks flying, and they will invite all the other legislators 
in the world to join in this beautiful game of battledore; 
but they don't propose for one minute to announce their peace 
aims. 

Why is it that the leaders of men that are fighting, when the 
question of economic destiny is at stake, continually repeat and 
repeat in phrases and paragraphs and documents and messages 
and letters the peace aims of the world ? There is only one aim 
and that is, "Can the Kaiser." There is a formula. It is simple ; 
it is picturesque ; it is expressive ; it covers the whole ground ; 
nobody has any misunderstanding as to what it means. In all 
the languages that are spoken along the Allied lines, "Can the 
Kaiser" can be understood. 

Those disgusting and intolerable things for which he stands 
must be hermetically sealed and put in the closet of oblivion, to 
stay there while the world lasts. 

Don't forget that this talk of peace is "made in Germany" 
and that it spells victory to Germany, and that peace — 
get the German standpoint on this question — peace, from the 
German conception of it is a military maneuver; peace is a part 
of her war campaign that she is fighting. It is as distinctly a 
part of her military procedure as an artillery barrage. When 
she says "Let us talk peace," I say that is as distinctly a military 
order from Berlin as the order given to the commander to make 
a barrage behind which his army may advance. It is to clear 
obstructions for her arms; for peace spells victory, and don't 
forget it. 

Every one in Germany, from the Kaiser down to the camp 
follower, wants peace. For, look at it; Germany holds to-day 
all she set out to get. She has diverted the eyes of the world 
from the critical issue of this campaign. Germany has kept the 



332 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

eyes of the world fixed on the western front, while she lusted 
for the Orient. That offensive may never take place on the 
western front, if she can keep the Allied line there while she 
sweeps over the Oriental world with the strength of her arms. 
She started out with a definite purpose : "Berlin to Bagdad." 
Look at your maps. She has the freedom of the Baltic. At this 
hour it is but a German lake. There are no Central Empires — 
don't deceive yourselves — there are no Central Empires. There 
is one imperial power that sweeps from the shores of the Baltic 
to the Dardanelles; Austria-Hungary is but the vassal of Ger- 
many. She could not make peace if she wanted to ; she must fight 
if Germany says so. If the Kaiser takes snuff the Emperor of 
Austria sneezes. 

Rumania-Bulgaria is merely a little empire; Turkey simply 
does Germany's dirty work, even though it be as dirty and 
bloody as the removing of Armenia from Germany's path of 
empire. The Armenian massacre was planned in Germany. The 
men that carried it out from Berlin were paid from the ex- 
chequers of Germany. It was directed by German intelligence, 
because Armenia lay in Germany's path of empire. 

To-day Germany controls from the Baltic clear through into 
Asia Minor; Suez within arm's reach; Egypt, the portal of 
Africa, just a stone's throw from her palace at Constantinople. 
And suddenly has come the Russian collapse, and the 
cry is "Change! Change!" Let the world awake; let men 
rouse themselves from their stupid indifference to this matter. 
The destiny of generations hangs trembling in the balance. It 
is no longer from "Berlin to Bagdad;" it is from "Prussia to 
the Pacific." More than she dreamed of lies before her. 

And the future is to-day in shadow, and as Mr. Beck says, 
how did it come about? In simple language, Russia was 
licked by piffle-piffle, absolutely. Mind you, the pacifists of 
Russia talked until they have handed over Russia to an empire 
that knows nothing of peace except as a war measure. The So- 
cialists of Russia talked until they have handed over Russia to an 
empire that knows nothing of the people except as tax-payers 
and cannon-fodder. The Revolutionists, the anarchists of Russia 
talked until they have handed over the freedom of Russia into a 
nation who is seeking, by the power of the sword, to rivet her 
tyranny upon the entire world. 

Talk when such a war is on ! It is worse than useless ; it is 
Wicked. It costs life; it costs blood; it imperils the future. 
Our children after us will live in a dark, sad world unless we 
rise to make it strong, pure, sweet and free for them. 

Talk! You could as easily talk with Germany and hope to 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 333 

change the course of her arms as you could hope to tame a wild 
bull by singing "I Want to be an Angel." 

It was William the Silent that armed those Dutch 
burghers who rolled back the tides of Spanish domination as the 
dikes of Holland roll back the sea. It was Grant, the reticent, 
who rolled back the forces of the enemies to our freedom at 
Appomattox ; and it is the men of silence who act, who translate 
the emotions of nations into deeds, who are needed for this great 
hour. There will come no peace into this world — mind you, the 
war may stop, but the war won't end. There is a difference — > 
and no peace will ever come into this world, the white dove of 
peace will not rest here, until the black war eagles of the Haps- 
burgs and the Hohenzollerns have had their necks wrung. 

Mr. Beck quoted that wonderful passage of the President, 
and none could put it more strongly in which he showed the 
absolutely insuperable obstacle to peace because Germany 
lacks honor and can't give a guaranteed covenant. Let me sug- 
gest another reason why there is an obstacle to peace ; that no 
self-respecting nation can sit down to the council board with a 
nation that outlaws the laws. It is not a question as to whether 
they would keep their word if you and I agreed to peace. We 
can't consort with them on equal terms, for their ideas of morals 
are different from ours. I have been very much impressed by 
the impression that has been made on the men abroad by the 
deportation of the men of Belgium. I have been struck by the 
fact that Van Dyke of Holland and Brand Whitlock of Belgium 
and Gerard of Germany have not insisted or laid such emphasis 
upon those brutalities that have affected us, all those spectacular 
outrages that have made our blood tingle ; but every one of them 
has spoken with lowered breath of the deportation of Belgian 
men. I never knew just why until I heard from Vernon Kelley 
who had charge of the provisioning of Belgium in connection 
with Mr. Hoover, and he told a story something like this: 

He saw that deportation take place over and over again, and 
he was sorry his eyes had ever had to witness it. He said you 
would see there a company of men as well bred, as well educated, 
as home-loving, as good citizens, as any of us who are gathered 
here. A quota is called from each town; a hundred from that 
hamlet, a thousand from that larger city. They are boarded on 
a cattle train ; a surgeon inspects them as rapidly as he can. 
These men are inspected by the surgeon and only those are 
taken that are regarded in the rapid inspection as fit. They are 
offered a chance to sign a paper which is presented to every one, 
which is a promise from Germany — significantly, it is a "scrap 
of paper" — and they know just how to value Germany's "scraps 



334< ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

of paper" — but the paper contains fair promises. It offers them 
money if they will sign ; it offers care for their friends, all sorts 
of beguiling things if they will sign that paper that they have 
voluntarily entered into the service of Germany. Not one will 
sign it. And, with the German bayonets at their back and Ger- 
man soldiers ready to shoot at command, those Belgians have 
gone off in cattle cars again and again, singing the Belgian Na- 
tional Anthem. 

And then, in Germany, they are taken to the munition fac- 
tories to make munitions to be used against their own friends, 
and they refuse. Then they are taken out into the open and ex- 
posed in such prison camps as McCarthy has spoken of; they 
are exposed to the weather ; they are starved ; they are not cared 
for in disease; until they become so useless to Germany that 
they are sent back ; "and then," said Mr. Whitlock, "I stood and 
received a trainful of these deported men that had been passed 
by the surgeon as fit for work in efficient Germany, and from that 
train," he said, "from those cars, there came down a crowd of 
ghosts. They had not had food for forty-eight hours. We had 
bread for them. We put a loaf of bread in a man's hands and 
he couldn't hold it. We broke off pieces of bread and gave to 
another man, and they dropped through his emaciated and trem- 
bling fingers, and the man simply sank in a heap on the ground 
and ate up the bread like a dog. And there was one poor fellow 
that was almost gone. We tried to fold his hands over a little 
piece of bread, that he might have something to eat, and in his 
fevered delirium he kept saying 'I won't sign; I won't sign,' 
and the man died saying 'I won't sign.' " 

Now, I say it is impossible for any nation with self-respect 
to sit in the council chamber and discuss terms of peace with a 
nation so dehumanized and so brutalized as the German nation 
under the direction of its military power. There is no peace 
without victory ; there is no peace without penalty. Mr. Lincoln 
had the right idea in these matters, and he once said, "We ac- 
cepted this war for a worthy object, and the war will end when 
that object is attained, and, under God, I hope it will not end 
until that time." And Mr. Lincoln knew not only about 
the ending of wars, but about the beginning of them. Do 
you realize it is at his call that we are in this war ? It is in an- 
swer to the call of that voice that death can never still into 
silence that America has unsheathed the sword and beaten the 
long roll for her sons to fall into the battleline; it is the voice 
that comes from Gettysburg that waked up this great people for 
whom he died. Those sentences of his familiar speech are the 
alphabet of our Americanism, and the words that he then uttered 



THE ELEMENTS OF THE PEACE PROBLEM 335 

ring like a clarion call in our ears to-day and set our patriotic 
blood on fire. 

Mark the wonderful application to this time : 

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth 
on this continent a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to 
the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are en- 
gaged in a great war, testing whether that nation or any nation, 
so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." 

It was with such burning words that belong to this present 
moment as well as to the half-century ago, that the saviour of 
our country began, and then as thought began to rise in 
his capacious soul, the horizons that bound the vision of 
lesser men seem to recede, and with the large outlook of a man 
inspired of God, he swept with his gaze the oncoming years and 
he read their message, and with almost prophetic ecstasy, he 
closed that speech with the phrases that have burned themselves 
into the American heart, that 

"government of the people, for the people and by the people, 
shall not perish" — 

Now notice, he did not say "from these States," he did not sa^ 
"from these Americas," he did not say "from this western, this 
new world" ; but, as though he saw and heard what we, we men 
here, and of which we, his descendants, are a part, he said, 

"government for the people, of the people and by the people, 
shall not perish from the earth" — 

the earth! 

And, as in that solemn time of the Civil War, the gathering 
of the youth and strength of America in camps, in training 
schools, in cantonments, in crowded transports along the battle 
line, is just saying over again what men said then, "We are com- 
ing, we are coming, Father Abraham, millions on millions strong ; 
it shall not perish, it shall not perish, from the earth!' 



TENTH DISCUSSION 

MARCH NINTH, 1918 
THE WOMEN OF 1918 



TfiE WOMEN OF 1918 



ONE: BY SERGEANT RUTH FARNAM 

Serbian Cavalry. 

It is very hard for me to speak, because I am only quite a new 
soldier. They made me one about a year ago and I did not go 
out intending to fight because that does not seem to be a woman's 
job. I never did want to fight, because, thank God, we Ameri- 
can women have our men to fight for us ; but I do feel the honor 
of wearing a uniform that has been made sacred by such sacri- 
fice, such devotion and such patriotism as the Serbians have 
shown. 

I suppose most of us know as little about Serbia as I did the 
first time I went there. I found myself there accidently in the 
war with Turkey, and then I learned much about the Serbians. 
Then I went out again during the war with Bulgaria, and al- 
though I had never seen blood before, although I had never been 
with sick people, I was put in the operating room of a hospital 
to wait on a surgeon while he performed major operations, where 
we had very few of the necessaries, no anaesthetics and no money 
with which to buy them. I have begged for many things for 
Serbia, and among those things I have begged for money to 
buy tobacco. I sometimes had to hold men in my arms while 
the surgeon operated on them, with nothing to deaden their pain 
at all. Yet I have had people say, "Oh, no; I will give money 
for clothing, drugs and food, but not for tobacco ; I don't believe 
in it; tobacco is bad for men." But I want to tell you 
if you had seen what I have seen of what tobacco 
means to men out there, what it is going to mean to our own 
boys in the hospitals, whether you approve of tobacco for men 
and boys or not, I assure you, you would give the last drop of 
your heart's blood to buy tobacco for those boys, if they want it, 
whatever your ideas on the subject may be. 

People say very often, "The Serbians are quarrelsome people ; 
they are always fighting there in the Balkans, and they always 
will be." Well, I presume you know that for a great many years 
Serbia has been oppressed by Austria and Germany, always Ger- 
many behind Austria egging her on to play on the historic ani- 

339 



340 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

mosities in the Balkans among her peoples there. Of course, 
Serbia will fight; she always will fight until she gets back her 
own. You know that Austria has on one pretext or another, 
taken from her Dalmatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and other terri- 
tory — all the richest provinces of Serbia have been simply stolen 
from her. Why, if anybody took from us Texas, Florida, Cali- 
fornia or Maine I think we would fight to the very end to get 
them back, because they are our own, they are part of our coun- 
try. Of course, Serbia will fight for that which is hers. Nobody 
can blame her for that. 

They say "The Serbians are a dirty people, primitive, igno- 
rant." For 500 years the Serbians have lain under the heel of 
Turkey, were not allowed liberty in any way except as regards 
their church. That survived. Their freedom and their schools 
were taken from them and yet they kept their blood pure. They 
never intermingled or intermarried with their conquerors, which 
is a remarkable thing. And if we, here in America, with our 
mixed blood, would unite and fight if anybody robbed us of our 
territory, how much more would those people fight for the land 
of their fathers. I think it is a very admirable thing. 

There is another thing which we in America do not quite 
understand; that we are safe and free to-day because of what 
Serbia has done. You know it is a good many years ago since 
Bismarck said "America is a fine, fat hog, and when we are 
ready we will stick it." It is not so long ago that Germany 
openly declared that her idea is the domination of the world, 
and what country is the most valuable to Germany? America. 
Germany wants South America, too, but while the United States 
stands upon her Monroe Doctrine Germany cannot get a free 
hand there. She intended and she still means, if she can, of 
course — she is beginning to realize that she cannot — she intended 
to come down through the Balkans, reap the fruits of her plots 
in India and Egypt and strike on our Western coast. Because 
of the British navy she could not get to our Eastern coast. With 
the aid of Mexico she meant to drive into our land up the 
valley of the Mississippi, thus cutting off the food supply of the 
West from the Eastern States — cutting off the arms and muni- 
tions of the East from the West and then we should have been 
helpless. 

But Belgium held the gates on the West and Serbia on the 
East — as she has always done. These two little countries, two 
of the smallest countries on the globe, foiled great, efficient 
Germany. For Honor's sake they stood there; they held the 
gates and said, for Honor's sake, "They shall not pass." 

Why, Austria offered peace to Serbia if she would desert the 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 341 

Allies and let the armies of the Central Empires pass down the 
Valley of the Morava. They said, "We will show no mercy 
unless you do it." Serbia had been invaded before many times, 
and she knew what it meant ; she knew it meant devastated terri- 
tory, murdered citizens, outraged women, crucified children, 
tortures unspeakable — many of the things that I have seen with 
my own eyes. Serbia knew what invasion meant and yet Mr. 
Pashitch, the Serbian Prime Minister, said : "It is better to die in 
beauty than to live in shame. We fight !" 

Serbia appealed to the Allies. She said to them, "You will 
never get through to the Dardanelles; you will never arrive at 
Constantinople that way. Let us strike Bulgaria before she is 
ready to attack us and we will guarantee that in a very short time 
you will be in Constantinople overland. Send troops to us and we 
will see that you get there." And the Allies did not understand. 
They said, "Bulgaria will never go against Russia. Bulgaria 
does not intend to do anything in this war. You dream." Serbia 
replied, "We know that Bulgaria wants only vengeance on us. 
She is being egged on by the Central Powers and is only waiting 
the moment to strike." And the Allies replied, "You imagine it. 
It is not so. We cannot send you troops from the Dardanelles 
because we could not get the men away from there alive." To 
this Serbia answered, "We are then dead men, but we will fight 
to the end." 

People often say to me, "I suppose Serbia has suffered almost 
as much as Belguim." Why, it is not that Belgium has not suf- 
fered enough ; but you must remember that if the people of Bel- 
gium could just get to their borders they could go into France 
or Holland or England and be cared for. Look at the map and 
you will see that Serbia had no such hope. On the north, Aus- 
tria; on the east, Bulgaria; on the west, Albania — just as poor, 
just as starved as Serbia was — and that splendid Serbian army 
was obliged to withdraw. Surrounded on three sides, they went 
out through a narrow neck of land into exile. Seventy thousand 
soldiers left their bones on that seventeen days' march over the 
Albanian mountains. They retreated with their faces to the foe, 
fighting every inch of the way. The women and old men and 
children, went out before the remembered horrors of war. They 
fled along those icy roads in November, with only the clothing 
they wore on their backs and the bread they could carry in their 
hands, because all the country was so poor ; and behind them, on 
every road in Serbia, the old men and boys and badly wounded 
soldiers stood in little groups and fought until the weapons 
dropped from their hands, until they fell at last on the blood- 
soaked soil of Serbia, and still they fought as the enemy marched 



342 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

over them, grasping him by the feet, and dragging him down 
and strangling him with the last ounce of strength in their dying 
hands, to give the refugees time to get a little further away. 

Those poor ones would have found death very sweet, could 
they have taken it, particularly the women, because so many of 
the little children died — whole families of them. One after 
another the mothers laid the little wasted bodies down by the 
roadside and were obliged to leave them to the famished dogs 
that roamed the country. Ladies, you know how easy it would 
have been for these poor mothers to have just lain down and 
died. But they were of sterner stock; they were soldiers just as 
much as the men ; they were fighting hunger, cold and utter de- 
spair, but clearly they knew these three things — three words — 
Love, Duty and Home. It was their duty to keep the breath of 
life in themselves as long as they could, so that if by some miracle 
they were saved they might come home again and raise up other 
children to help restore the country of their devotion. At last 
all too many, unable to go further, sat down by the roadside, 
and, still, blaming none, gave up their brave spirits. 

All the roads out of Serbia, every one of those mountain 
passes into Albania, are lined with the heroic bones of those poor 
women who died for their country just as much as the soldiers 
did. And when finally the remaining refugees reached the sea- 
shore, it was weeks before help came, and they died there in 
thousands, uncomplaining to the end. 

I have been in Serbia in three wars, and in all that time, in 
which I have had men and women and little children die in my 
arms of disease, wounds and starvation, I have never yet heard 
one Serbian beg. The thing that came nearest to it was last year, 
just behind the battle lines. I was going through a tent hospital 
which had just been established out there. It was set up first 
on the Island of Corsica for the refugees, and when it was 
no longer needed there, it was moved up into Macedonia. It 
had been founded by money collected in this country by Miss 
Burke and myself a few months before. At the door of one of 
the wards — these tent wards — a man lay dying, and as I came 
through with a big basket of cigarettes (I had bought up the stock 
of a tobacconist down the road) this dying man had just enough 
strength left to say "Cigarette." I put it in his mouth, lighted 
it, he drew one deep breath into his lungs and was dead — happy 
because he had got a cigarette. 

That same day I passed a little group of refugees. These 
people had been taken care of in Macedonia and were trying 
to get back, just to set their feet again on the beloved soil of 
Serbia. I saw them sitting by the roadside and with them a 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 343 

little girl about nine years of age. She was the most pitiful 
sight, just bones with yellowish skin drawn sharply over them. 
She smiled, or seemed to, as we passed. I had gone but a little 
distance when it occurred to me that there must be something I 
could do, so I stopped the car and went back. It was not five 
minutes since I had first seen the child. I spoke to her now and 
she did not answer. I picked her up from the ground and she 
was dead — just in those few minutes. I said to the woman 
sitting by, "What was it?" She looked at me and said, "She 
was my child and she had great hunger." That was on the main 
road, over which the soldiers were passing through to the Front 
every day. 

Every man had bread, and yet those people died of starvation. 
They would not and they could not ask for that bread which 
should help these men to fight again for their loved country. 
That is the spirit of the people of Serbia. You cannot kill a 
spirit like that. 

I want to tell you how I became a soldier. I want to talk 
about myself ! My mother did not raise her girl to be a soldier, 
but the Serbian Relief Committee of America, with which I am 
associated, found that it would be necessary for some one to 
investigate the administration of the funds which had been col- 
lected in America and to learn what it would be advisable for us 
to concentrate on in the future. So I volunteered to go. It was 
a wonderful journey. I wish I had time to tell you about it. 
I went through places where it was most difficult to travel. 
Through every friendly belligerent country of Europe. I got 
through with no delays at all, just an American woman traveling 
on an errand of mercy, that was my passport. Of course, I had 
passports, letters and other credentials, too, but that is why they 
let me go through. Everywhere, our Ministers, our Consuls said, 
"They won't let you go further," and yet in every country they 
let me go with no delay at all. 

I arrived in Greece to find that Mr. Venizelos had tired of the 
vacillations of King Constantine. When I got to Athens I re- 
ceived a message that the Queen would be pleased to receive 
me. I remembered that she was the sister of the Kaiser, and 
sent a reply saying that I had a bad cold and would not be able 
to go since it might be influenza. The messenger who was an 
old friend of mine, just winked, and said, "I understand," and 
I did not go. 

The crowd had been stoning the British and French Lega- 
tions. Then they came around to the American Legation and 
made a great demonstration. The Greeks were shouting, "Amer- 
ica is sorry for us. America is going to send her fleet to protect 



344 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

us from the Allies," and poor Doctor Droppers, our Minister, 
had to go out on the balcony and make a speech. He knew that 
if he said America would not send her fleet the mob would be 
enraged, and if he said the ships were coming Washington would 
recall him, so he was in danger of getting into trouble either 
with the Greeks or with our own Government. It was very- 
funny to see him wriggle, but he used considerable tact and got 
out of it splendidly. 

He took me around to see the British Minister and there be- 
gan my first exhibition of tongue control ! I have made up for 
it since I got back! Doctor Droppers introduced me to Sir 
Francis Elliot and I did not say a word except, "How do you 
do?" I let these two men do the talking. However, at the end 
of five minutes I saw I was a nuisance, so I said, "Sir Francis, 
I know you will do the best you can. If you can, let me go ; if 
you can't, please say so and I will go away and try to be content." 
He asked, "Do you mean that?" I replied, "I do." He said, 
"We shall see." I thought, "Here's where I start back for 
America." He sent me down to the Bureau des Allies, where I 
filled out the necessary forms. I suppose my photograph is in 
every police station in Europe, because wherever you go you 
have to hand out a stack of photographs, for the civil and mili- 
tary authorities, which looks like a pack of playing cards. They 
keep the pack, sticking a photograph onto every paper in sight, 
and just give you one to identify you at the next place. 

I was introduced to an American who looked like an Ameri- 
can stage detective. He was stocky, thick-set, and had a derby 
hat cocked over one eye — a "gimlet eye" which looked straight 
through me into my very soul. He said, "Wnen do you want to 
sail?" I said, "To-morrow." He said, "You will have to get 
your passports vised by the American Consul, the British Con- 
sul, the Italian Consul, the French " I interrupted him, say- 
ing, "I want to get back to America in time to catch the winter 
season and get more money to keep some of the Serbians alive." 
He said, "Oh, I will get it vised and send it around to your hotel 
to-night." I nearly collapsed with joy. 

Saloniki was a most marvelous sight. The harbor was full 
of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, hospital ships — the biggest 
passenger ships in the world painted white with a green band 
on their sides and a Red Cross painted on them. Later some of 
these latter ships were sunk while carrying wounded. Not very 
long before our arrival a Zeppelin had been brought down near 
Saloniki within five hundred feet of the house of one of my 
friends, where she and her two little children were sleeping. 
Every once in a while a hydro-aeroplane would go swooping over- 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 34& 

head like a great dragon-fly, and the town was full of the most 
varied aggregation of men I have ever seen. There were Rus- 
sians, Englishmen, French, Italians, Serbians, Austrian prisoners, 
Bulgarian prisoners, a few Turks, and you saw every kind of 
uniform, every color, every shape, every sort, and the most 
gorgeous outfits of all, I may tell you, were worn by American 
war correspondents. 

I was not in uniform; I was not a soldier; I was just a 
traveler. One day a French officer who, seeing me not in uni- 
form nor dressed as a nurse, could not make out what I was 
doing there in a port of war, said, "What are you, Madam, a sur- 
geon, a journalist, or a doctor perhaps?" I said, "The only way 
I can describe exactly what I am is by using a German phrase." 
He said, "We will forgive you under the circumstances." Said 
I, "Well, then, I will tell you; I am a hausfrau mit wander- 
lust." 

I had been told that women who asked questions were per- 
sona non grata. I went to the Consulates ; to the refugee camps 
and the hospitals ; I interviewed everybody who could give me any 
information on the subject of Serbia's needs. It was interesting, 
though very tragic. At the end of five days, knowing that my 
room was preferable to my company, I was ready to start back — 
my report written out and all available information at my fingers' 
ends. 

At this point I was introduced to Col. Doctor Sondermeyer, 
head of the Military Medical Service of the Serbian Army. I 
happened to hear him say he was going up to the Front the next 
day. I dashed forward and said, "I would give anything I 
possess to go there." He said, "Do you speak German?" I 
don't but I know many words in German, so I said, "I speak it 
very well." He said, "Under those circumstances I will take 
you the next time I go." Perhaps I was not excited. I wanted 
to tell everybody I was going to the Front. He told me I must 
not speak of it, nobody must know I was going, since even news- 
paper men were not allowed to go. For five endless days I sat 
around Saloniki and waited. Finally I went out and secured my 
ticket back home. Getting back to the hotel I found Col. Sonder- 
meyer waiting for me. He asked, "Can you be ready to go to 
the Front in half an hour?" I said, "I should think so." Ten 
minutes before the half hour was up I was in his office ready 
to go. We went out. We were the only people in Macedonia 
leaving the city that day. Mr. Venizelos had arrived that morn- 
ing and I had been asked to be on the Committee to meet him. 
We drove for hours over the rough roads of Northern 
Macedonia. As night fell and the moon came up, we found 



346 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

ourselves climbing a mountain and there, in a white city, we 
spent the night. 

I don't say we slept — we spent the night! Because when I 
took the lamp over and investigated my bed the slaughter began. 
At dawn I was outside that hotel. I went out into the street 
and whistled up toward where I believed the Colonel's room to 
be, and from every window except his a head appeared. I 
thought that he must have been devoured. I was just turning 
sadly away when around the corner came the wreck of Col. 
Sondermeyer. He clapped his hand to his head and said, "What 
a night!" And I knew he had suffered, too. 

I sent some one to fetch my things and then we started on 
our way. About two miles out of town we fell in with a column 
of marching troops. We were in a little, coughing, sputtering, 
choking Ford car. It was a clever thing. It would throw us up 
into the air and catch us as we came down. It never missed us 
once. We would skid around a motor lorry, then just miss a 
group of soldiers, and those soldiers, by the way, were French 
and Senegalese — all of them in the blue-gray uniform of the 
French army and with steel helmets shaped somewhat like a 
soup-plate. 

It was a sultry Indian-summer day, and the sweat was pour- 
ing down the faces of the Senegalese until they looked like wet 
chocolate. Col. Sondermeyer, who was choking with the dust, 
fell into the common mistake of thinking that because they didn't 
understand Serbian, they would understand his only other foreign 
language, so he shouted to them in German to let us pass. The 
Senegalese came at us and it looked for a minute as if we would 
be punctured with their bayonets. However, I leaned out and ex- 
plained in my very best French who we were and would they 
kindly let us pass? 

Then we came to that wonderful tent hospital. We inspected 
the place and later the Crown Prince arrived and there was a 
modest luncheon. He had me placed next to him and talked to 
me about America. "Do you think America will come into this 
war?" he asked. I said, "Yes, why not? She is only getting 
ready. We Americans are of so many mingled races that we 
don't all see things in the same way. It is only a question of 
time when we will come in. I know we will." You see, we 
women did not have the vote then, and nothing I could say would 
compromise the Government! 

"Why don't you go nearer the Front?" he asked. I replied, 
"Highness, I am told that it is quite impossible." "Nothing is 
impossible," he said. My heart began to jump. He said some- 
thing in Serbian to his Chief-of-Staff, who asked, "How far do 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 347 

you want to go, Madame?" "Just as far as possible," I said. 
He answered, "We will see about it," and the next day at dawn 
we started off toward the sound of the guns. 

I was presented, in a partly ruined village, to the Commander- 
in-Chief of the Serbian Army. Everybody in Macedonia asked 
questions but me. He, too, asked, "How far do you want to go ?" 
I replied, "Just as far as you will allow me." His Aide-de-Camp 
came, we were again packed into the car, and again we were 
going nearer to the sound of those guns. We came to a place 
where there were two rough stones set up in the earth. The Aide- 
de-Camp got out of the car and said, "I have the honor to in- 
form you that you are the first woman of any nationality to enter 
reconquered Serbian territory." I did not take me long to pile 
out of that car. Please don't think me oversentimental. Re- 
member I have seen those people suffer. I realized then what 
America owed to Serbia. I went on one knee, picked up a hand- 
ful of that earth, sacred because it was consecrated by so much 
heroic blood, and pressed it to my lips. 

Suddenly somebody said, "There's an aeroplane," and I saw 
just a flash of silver in that cloudless air. Growing out of that 
blue sky, behind the flash of silver, were three fleecy puffs of 
vapor. As these flecked the sky I cried out "What is it ?" and was 
told, "It is one of our planes pursued by the enemy shrapnel." 
Those little, fleecy, innocent-looking puffs with many deaths 
in each one were chasing it down the sky, but it got safely 
away. 

Now we had to leave the car and begin to climb a small moun- 
tain. We were so near the guns by this time that we could barely 
hear each other's shouting. From a little gulley some officers ap- 
peared who offered me their chargers to ride. Those cavalry 
horses were magnificent chargers, sixteen hands two. I was in an 
ordinary tailor-made skirt, so I decided to walk. From twelve 
o'clock until one on this sultry, Indian-summer day we climbed. I 
had on a cool shirt waist with the collar open, so I felt fairly 
comfortable, but the officers in their uniforms with the closed 
collars looked very warm. Imagine thinking of this feature of 
personal comfort then. 

Somebody gave me a big ball of cotton wool. I put some into 
my ears so I looked like a rabbit. The next moment we came 
around a corner and saw a group of big guns. The shells from 
them were falling in the Bulgarian trenches. We walked on and 
came to a place where we were met by a group of officers. The 
Commander had them cease firing for a little while we talked 
and then said, "Do you want to see what is going on?" 

They took me to the top of a precipice. Before me, nine miles 



348 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

away, was Monastir. In the mountains were the French forces, 
their shells falling on this plain, keeping the enemy back. In the 
curve of the river opposite, a very large force of Bulgarians was 
entrenched. Their shells were falling in a village a quarter of a 
mile behind us. The long procession of stretchers would go out 
from that little village and back to the dressing station behind 
the lines. I saw men brought off that battlefield, where first the 
Serbians had held it, then the enemy, then the Serbians again, — 
with their eyes gouged out, their noses cut off, and later I saw 
the Serbian soldiers sharing their scanty stock of tobacco with 
their captured enemies. This is the difference between the Serbian 
and the Bulgarian. 

The Commander said, "Would you like to go further into 
Serbia than even we have been?" Upon my reply in the affir- 
mative, as usual, he said, "Take my hand. Lean out." I leaned 
out from the verge of the precipice and by the length of my own 
body I was further into Serbia than the Serbians had been ! As 
I looked down into our trenches a moment later I saw a great shell 
fall there and eight or ten men were smashed to a bloody pulp. 
He then asked, "Would you like to give the signal for our guns 
to recommence firing?" I did so. In a moment, "Boom" — those 
great shells went over my head. When I saw that great mush- 
room of dust and blood and arms and legs go up in the air, I 
cheered like a crazy woman. I cried, "Vengeance ! Vengeance ! 
I send this in the name of American women." It was not that 
red-headed Texas boy who fired the first shot for America in this 
war; it was a woman's hand who fired the first shot to avenge 
European womanhood. 

They said I would have to leave. I said, "I can't go ; I won't 
go." I had often wondered how I would conduct myself when I 
found myself under fire. My father was a soldier. I wanted to 
stay there. I was not afraid. It did not occur to me that I was 
in any danger. I would not have minded if I knew I was going 
to die. I would have stayed. I was there with heroes, with men, 
some of whom had passed through my hands in hospitals two 
years before, and they were fighting again for their native land. 
But they said I must go. They told me, "You know it is very 
dangerous. If any harm comes to you we are responsible. You 
must go." 

So I started down the hill. Just then the Commander-in-Chief 
came up and I flung myself at him. He is a little man and I 
almost squashed him flat. I said, "Have I got to go ?" "Haven't 
you had enough of it?" he asked. "No," I cried. He looked a 
trifle dazed and said, "You ought to have been a soldier." "Make 
me one," I shouted. And after I got back to America I received 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 349 

the material for my uniform and a letter saying that I had been 
made a Sergeant in the Royal Serbian Army. 

The Commander-in-Chief, when dusk began to fall, said, 
"Now, Madame, we are going to consider you our mascot. To- 
night we will leave the trenches and see if we can make the ad- 
vance which will take us across the river for the first time in 
our march toward Monastir." I said, "Will you let me know 
when you are going to make the charge ?" He looked at me and 
said, "You will hear us," and I went back by his orders to a place 
behind the lines. 

I felt as if there were steel bands pulling me back to the moun- 
tains every step I took away from them. I went back to that 
dressing station, where those mutilated men were, some of whom 
bore little if any resemblance to men at all, because they had been 
in the enemy's hands. The doctors told me Serbian stories and 
sang Serbian songs. And at last there was a lull in the fighting. 
Then pandemonium broke loose. The guns were firing furiously, 
every gun and every rifle, and we heard the men leave the 
trenches. We heard them make that dash across the plain, where 
they drove the Bulgarians out and crossed the river for the first 
time in their advance into their own country. 

Back there, in the dressing station behind the lines, with those 
dying men near me, I sang "America." I haven't any more 
voice than a crow. The tears rolled down my face. If I were to 
be paralyzed or stricken blind to-morrow, I have recollections 
enough for a long, long life, and I was happy because it was not 
just I who was there, not simply Ruth Farnam, — you were there, 
all you American women stood there among those brave men. 

And when I had to come back — oh! it was hard to have to 
come back to America just to beg. I want to go back now, but 
I am under orders to stay here, because here I can do more 
valuable work than I could hope to do over there. 

When I got to Saloniki, Prince Alexander sent for me. After 
talking some time of what America might do in the future he 
said, "I know what happened up there. I see you wear two of 
our decorations. I want you to wear the third," and he gave me 
the St. Sava, which is the highest decoration of its kind given. 
I said, "Does your Highness think I merit it?" He replied, "I 
know no better friend of Serbia than Ruth Farnam. Go back 
and tell America how much we appreciate what has been done for 
us by America. Tell her that we look upon her as our sister ; that 
we will fight to the end ; that we will be faithful to death. If you 
will send us just machinery and seeds, when the war is over, after 
our first harvest we shall require no aid from any one." 

Yesterday, talking to a great authority on Serbian affairs, he 



350 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

said, "Do you realize that if America does as well as Serbia has 
done, there will never be war again in this world ?" I said, "Yes, 
I think so." He answered, "Tell America that when she has 
spent fifty billion dollars, when she has lost twenty-five million 
of her population, she will have done in comparison as much as 
Serbia has done — or at least suffered." 



TWO: BY MRS. A. BURNETT-SMITH 

(Annie S. Swan) of London, England. 

After the eloquent and most moving story to which we have 
listened, I almost fear that I will not be able to get and hold your 
attention because the story I have to tell is very different. There 
is no fighting in it, the kind of fighting that we have just heard 
about and which has made our hearts so thrill in response; but 
I think, nevertheless, that my own story of how the womanhood 
of my country was mobilized for war and how it is carrying on 
to this day will also move your hearts, perhaps because you may 
find in it some parallel for your own case, and it may present 
the picture of what you will have to become before the war 
is won. 

I must take you back to the wonderful days of 1914, when 
there was presented to the world surely the most amazing 
spectacle it had ever seen. I do not know how it was in this 
country before you entered the war ; but in my country the season 
immediately preceding the war was one of unexampled extrav- 
agance. Never at any time had there been such expenditure of 
money, such a wild pursuit of pleasure, such devotion to sport, 
and to ease, and to having what you call here "a good time." 
The country was very prosperous; wages were high; there was 
plenty of money and it was thrown about with a reckless 
extravagance, and always there was the search and cry for some 
new thing; but there was no happiness. Everywhere you could 
see the unrest in the people's faces, and the eyes of the women 
were tired, and their hearts were empty. They did not know 
what was the matter with them. 

Then God, who makes no mistakes, either in the lives of 
human beings or of nations, said, "It is time to awake out of 
sleep," and in a moment, all the false gods we had been worship- 
ing, the things I have told you of, fell from us like a garment 
for which we had no further use, and we became in a moment 
one class and one people, brothers and sisters, united behind the 
common danger and the common cause. 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 351 

Then there was to be seen the miracle of our new army. 
The roads and streets re-echoed with the tramp of armed men 
and arming men; not troops or soldiers or men who had to be 
there because it was their duty and they could not escape it. 
Oh, no ; our sons came at the call of danger from the uttermost 
ends of the earth, ready to give their fine young lives and hopes 
and futures, all that they were and had, to lay it at the feet of 
the mother who had borne them. When these millions were 
taken from the civilian occupations, you will readily understand 
that civilian life was at once affected to such a degree that business 
was almost paralyzed; and then it was that the women had to 
step into the breach. 

If you were to go to England to-day you would see the 
words that are written on this programme, "The Women of 
191 8." You would see them visualized, mobilized, working, carry- 
ing out the whole programme of industry, filling up every gap 
and helping to win the war in any way they can ; in many ways 
which it is impossible for me to tell you but which history alone 
will perpetuate. 

The first cry was, "They have to be equipped with arms and 
uniforms and everything they need." Munitions were the first 
essential. Do you know that at the outbreak of the war we had 
in England only three factories for the actual creation and 
output of munitions? We have now five thousand, and a very 
large number of those factories are manned by women, if I may 
use that expression. We have now two million of the women 
mobilized for war service, under martial law quite as much as 
the men are. They all wear uniforms and they are not allowed 
to resign their commissions or to leave except under strict 
medical exemption. A large percentage of our munition workers 
were women of the very highest class, the daughters of the 
peers of the realm, cabinet ministers, rich men's daughters who 
had never in their lives done a day's work, and some of them 
have been working in these factories now for over three years, 
earning their weekly wage, twelve hours per day, living the 
communal life in the village, side by side with their sisters from 
the East End, and giving all they earn into the war fund. 

They don't like that work. How could they? There is 
nothing in war or in what war stands for that could appeal to 
women. God has made woman a creator. War is a destroyer. 
War makes waste and throws away. Woman, by her high herit- 
age, is a builder, a constructor. She cares for the old and cares 
for the young and tender and those who need her; and therefore, 
I say that war and all it stands for is opposed to everything she 
holds most dear. And yet, here is this extraordinary spectacle 



352 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

of a whole great nation mobilized from the highest to the lowest 
for the prosecution of the war, pledged to one thing, and that 
one thing only that there shall be no cessation of labor, no 
slackening, until the war is actually won. 

The explanation is very simple; because there is one thing 
that is worse than war, and that is a peace which is based upon 
dishonor, upon broken promises, upon selfish shirking of re- 
sponsibility. And it is because through suffering that the 
womanhood of Great Britain has realized these great essential 
truths that there is not to be found now, in this, the fourth year 
of the war, from end to end of the great Empire, one who has 
grudged or will ever grudge any sacrifice that she has made. 

I don't like that word ''sacrifice." I think we ought to elimi- 
nate it from our war vocabulary; for surely, when we consider 
that for which we fight, we, the free English-speaking peoples, 
pledged to fight and to die if need be for the great truths and 
great essential facts which alone make life worth living, why 
should we call it sacrifice? Nay, we should call it and feel it 
to be rather a right, a privilege and a joy. 

I could tell you much more about the mobilization of our 
women, about our operations in every field of labor which 
hitherto has been sacred to men. I think the field where we 
found the most difficulty in planting out the women soldiers was 
in the land army, now numbering three hundred thousand. I 
don't know how the farmers are in this country, but in our 
country they belong to what we call the old, conservative party 
that never wants to change anything. They want to go on and 
on in the old paths, chosen by their fathers and their grand- 
fathers; and so we had very great difficulty in persuading the 
farmers that it was essential that they should at least give the 
women workers a trial on the land. A very typical old farmer 
whom I tackled on that in the market-place of my own town was 
very indignant because I asked him to take three women to 
take the place of three men who had to go into the army. 
"Women on the land! They ain't any good on the land; they 
don't even know how to work a garden. Just see what Eve did 
in Eden." We could not quite follow his reasoning. All that 
was recorded of poor Eve is that she handed on the apple. 

However, I am happy to tell you that he had to take the three 
women and that now, like Oliver Twist, he is asking for "More !" 

Then we have a large legion working in France. They 
have replaced the men at the base camps and behind the lines 
who used to work as orderlies, did the clerical, the typing and 
signaling work. We have a very large army there and new 
troops are constantly being sent over; but they have done such 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 353 

satisfactory service that constantly the appeal will come from 
the other side for more and more to be sent over. 

I suppose you are making a number of mistakes here, just 
as we did at home in the beginning of the war. Our Premier, 
Mr. Lloyd George, said in one of his wonderful speeches, that to 
a peace-loving country war is a trackless waste in which the path 
has to be discovered, and it is only service which entitles 
criticism. We must remember that when we are trying to judge 
those who have these terrible responsibilities on their shoulders, 
and ask ourselves whether we have given sufficient service to 
entitle us to pass any criticism on them. 

The women have been so splendid in their spirit and in their 
example to the entire nation that I can scarcely speak about it 
and command my voice, but I should like to give you one little 
picture which will show you how they feel and act in moments 
of extreme peril and danger ; and before I tell you that little story 
I think I ought to explain to you what I think is not fully 
understood yet in this country, that a very large section of 
England is now as much the war zone as any country which is 
invaded or where the actual fighting is going on. We are liable 
to bombardment from the sea and we have had a great deal of 
it, and also we have continuous air-raids three or four nights 
a week. It is what is called, that is, in the cities, "The Zeppelin 
Season." 

At the beginning of the Zeppelin raids I had the misfortune 
to have my own home blown up and everything in it was 
destroyed. We, happily, by a mercy, a miracle of God's grace, 
were all spared. We were all doing the thing we were told not to 
do. We were told to go into the basement. We were not then so 
frightened, and we were outside, watching the airships, when, 
in a moment of time — four minutes by the clock the raid lasted — ■ 
my house and a great many other houses in the immediate vicinity 
were absolutely destroyed, a great many people were killed, and 
such havoc wrought as you have seen in pictures from the 
ordinary fighting fronts. It is a very extraordinary thing 
to stand on the terrace of your house one moment, lov- 
ing all that is within those walls; — it was full of treasures 
which we had gathered up through a long life of happy associa- 
tion together ; each article in that house had its little story ; — 
and the next moment there was no house and there was nothing 
left; but so extraordinary is the mental state and the spiritual 
uplift of these long years of strain and suffering that one cares 
no more about these things. There are no things any more; 
there are only a great cause and what we can do to help it all. 
We are not our own any longer; "we are bought with a price.' , 



354 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Before I sit down I should just like to touch, as I like to do 
always, on the spiritual side of the war, because it is only when 
it is fully realized by all those who are engaged in this mighty 
struggle that it is not an ordinary war at all, it is not a common 
struggle between one nation and another nation for supremacy 
or a "place in the sun" or money or territory or any of the things 
that they say they fight for; it is something far deeper and 
higher and more sacred and more essential. It is the great fight 
between right and wrong, between might and right; it is the 
struggle for the supremacy of the things that matter, the only 
things which make life possible for the men and women who 
care upon the face of this earth. 

And I should like to explain to you in as few words as I can, 
what the effect of these three and a half years of strain has 
been on our people, how very gradually it has come about, how 
we have been purged and made clean from so much of the selfish 
dross and self-seeking which characterized us before ; because it 
is a very comforting and uplifting feeling that one gets reflecting 
upon it. It means just this, that war is not altogether a de- 
stroyer. It has something in it which compensates, something 
which builds up and helps to reconstruct. Before there can be 
a reconstruction of any old worn-out fabric, there must neces- 
sarily be something broken and shorn away. You know some- 
thing of what our losses have been. We don't any more read 
our casualty lists ; none of us dare. They are very long. Before 
I left home they were always quoted at about two thousand a 
day, and I should like you just to try and visualize what that 
means to my country, how many mourning hearts that stands 
for. I believe I am quite within the mark when I say there is 
not a single home in the whole length and breadth of the land 
which has not at least one empty chair or maimed son. In the 
little country town to which I have the honor to belong that is 
practically true, and there are many villages where there is not 
left a single young man, there is not one who will ever come 
back ; and all that stands between old age and the future are the 
little children in arms and the little, little boys who run about the 
streets. 

What, then, do you think, is the spirit of the people who have 
come through all these things? The same spirit, you will find, 
as we have had so splendidly described about the people of 
Serbia. You will find it in Italy, in France and in Belgium, and 
you will find it in great America when the testing time comes; 
and you need not be afraid of the test, because when it comes 
you will be ready for it. There will come to you from afar a 
great courage, a wonderful ability to stand up, even under 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 355 

sorrows the most poignant and the most lasting; it will come to 
you as it has come to us ; there will be compensation. 

I have one friend who lost all of her five sons. One was 
killed at Gallipoli; the other four sleep in France and Flanders. 
She herself works fourteen hours a day at a canteen, and, what 
is more wonderful than all, there is no cloud on her face. 

Whence comes this amazing strength? Aye, it comes from 
far away; it comes because we know that we have a sure and 
certain hope. We know that all that glorious young life, the 
flower and hope and joy of the nation, could not go down like 
the beasts that perish. Nay, nay; somewhere beyond they are 
"carrying on"; they are marching on; as one of your splendid 
battle-songs says ; and it is up to us, the men and women who 
are left and for whom they have died, to ask ourselves right 
here and now, what are we doing in this great struggle. Are we 
doing and giving the utmost that is in us? 

Like all things in human history and human life, it narrows 
itself down to the individual responsibility. It was remembered 
when the Lord Jesus Himself walked with men, how very keen 
and quick He was to pronounce in matters of right and wrong; 
there was no neutrality about Him. He swept the money- 
changers from the temple. He also said, Who was Himself 
the Prince of Peace, "I am come not to bring peace, but a 
sword;" and He also said, "Whoso is not for us is against us." 
And so, it is narrowed down to one little platform: either we 
are for or against, and if we are for a person or a cause, what do 
we do ? Why, we give all ; we give our money — that is nothing, 
anybody can give money — we give our time, our service, our 
loved ones, and that is the hardest of all; we give ourselves. 

I know that great America is going to rise to that height. 
She is so great and so fine a country and has so long stood for 
all that is free and noble and best in the human race, that now 
is her opportunity to show that not only can she equal the 
sacrifice and glorious expenditure of those who have been so 
long in this terrible fight ; but, please God, perhaps she may excel 
them and show to the world what a consecrated democracy is 
ready to do for mankind. 



356 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 



THREE: BY MRS. AMELIA BINGHAM 

Although you have just been standing may I ask every one 
in the room to rise while I read a toast? 

"Here's to the blue of the frozen North, 

When we meet on the fields of France; 
May the spirit of Grant be over all 

When the sons of the North advance. 

Here's to the gray of the sun-kissed South, 

When we meet on the fields of France; 
May the spirit of Lee be over all 

When the sons of the South advance. 

Here's to the blue and the gray as one, 

When we meet on the fields of France; 
May the Spirit of God be over all 

When the sons of the Stars and Stripes advance." 

If you had asked me to speak on the men of 1918, I believe 
I could have said more gratifying things, because my past three 
months have been spent mostly with our soldiers in our various 
camps; three months of gratification such as I have never 
experienced in all my life. If I have had to my credit any 
stage glory in my time, it has disappeared entirely and I can 
think only of what to me is the greatest body of men I have 
ever had the privilege of seeing in all my life. When I talk with 
these men, and take men and women of the stage to them to 
entertain them for an hour or two to make them forget the 
loved ones left behind, I see this w T onderful manhood; but back 
of it I see the faces of the mothers, the wives and sweethearts; 
and I want to tell you my task has not always been any easy 
one. 

It just seems that we had to have this war, to realize the 
wonderful manhood in this country. We had to go to the mines 
and fields and factories and bring these wonderful men together ; 
and now, as I look at them and talk to them and say good-bye 
to them, I receive their messages, not one or a dozen, but by 
the thousands, for by my diary I have talked to ten thousand of 
our men who were just ready to leave, some of them in two or 
three hours ; some of them in twenty- four. I see back of those 
men the faces of the women, not the 1918 women, but those 
splendid, wonderful mothers. I don't know that they are just 
the kind of women that we 1918 women are. I don't know, but 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 357 

that sometimes we might be just a little jealous of them, because 
those men to me are a body of the most wonderful, the most 
serious-minded, the cleanest, the most wholesome men that the 
world has ever known. 

Could they have been what they are except for the mothers, 
the women of a few years ago that thought nothing about voting 
or about doing the things that we women are aspiring to do 
to-day? Perhaps you gather at this moment that I am not a 
suffragist. I never have been and I never have even approved 
of many of the things they' do. I am glad to say I am one of 
the sort of old-fashioned women. I love the attention of the 
men ; I like to get in a street car and have a man get up and tip 
his hat and give me his seat. If women these days are assuming 
what they seem to consider their right and don't feel the need 
of these things, well, I am sorry, but I have got to confess that 
the women have been preparing themselves for a something 
that perhaps they didn't realize ; and now we are obliged to take 
the places of the men, thousands of places ; well, thank God, we 
are ready for it. 

Then too, as I look at my soldier-men, I can't have much 
sympathy for them, because to me they have in every way the 
best of it. The sorriest to me are the faces of the mothers and 
wives and sweethearts. It is a privilege to wear that uniform. 
It is an honor to die with that uniform on for this great, glorious 
country of ours, and we women can't wear it. We can only stop 
behind. We have just as much patriotic blood in our veins as 
the men, and sometimes I think that this work that I am doing 
through being the Chairman of the Camp Entertainment Com- 
mittee of the Stage Women's War Relief, a wonderful organiza- 
tion in New York, of which I have every reason to be mighty 
proud — I dare say there are many men and women in this room 
who have never taken us people of stage-land quite seriously, 
but to those I would say, "Go to our workrooms at the corner 
of Thirty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, and see what we are 
doing; the wonderful hospital supplies that we are turning out, 
the entertainment that we are furnishing for a little recreation 
for our men." We are giving our services, oh so willingly, so 
happily, because we just feel that we want to be of this work, 
that we want to be permitted to do our bit, and that is why it 
is a joy to go to the camps and to see them just before they go 
away, make them forget, make them know that we women are 
at their backs ; for, no matter what we do in this war, how great 
or small the task, we must have encouragement ; we must know 
that there is somebody back of us that has confidence in us, and 
oh, how our men are going to deport themselves ! 



358 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

I had the privilege of seeing them five or six months ago. 
They were white- faced, many of them round shouldered; they 
could scarcely keep time with the music. Watch them now and 
realize what it is going to mean for the next generation. My 
friend alluded to the war as a waste. No ; we must not let it 
be that. We are going to learn from this. This wonderful 
experience is going to make us realize that there is a God 
behind the men in America. We can't live without God and 
without the Church. I am sorry to confess that I am afraid 
we had grown to the point where we were so satisfied with our 
wonderful success, with our wonderful prosperity, that we almost 
forgot. 

For months in my great sorrow a little more than two years 
ago, I went about New York, looking for something, I scarcely 
knew what; I went first to the Catholic, then to the Christian 
Science, then to Doctor Woelfkin's church. I went into every 
church in New York, and even then, I learned something : that in 
the churches of New York we have the most wonderful speakers. 
Why, it is a liberal education to get up on a Sunday morning and 
hear these wonderful men in our churches; it makes very little 
difference what the denomination. 

There is another thing we have got to learn from this war: 
that extravagance has been our national sin. Very well ; we 
accept it; but it is for us women to learn to save and save and 
give and give, and we will all be better for it. It is going to 
make us more considerate of humanity, the world over. I have 
lived a good deal abroad ; I have had the pleasure of playing to 
our English-speaking people. I would be sorry to say that I felt 
that I have sometimes had more appreciation there than I 
have had in our country. I know every inch of France, 
where our men are; I know what it means. We have got to 
learn that our soldiers have got to deport themselves so that 
we may hope there will never be another war. 

Now, to do that, we men and women, we stay-at-homes, our 
brave, splendid men who are past the age, whose hearts ache to 
go but must stay behind, what must we do? We have got to 
work and pray for those that go ahead. We have got to help 
to teach those nations who are our allies, that they can rely on 
us in another way besides finance. We have got to teach them 
to realize that we are no longer a baby nation, but that we are 
grown up. 

The night winds sweep o'er the fields of France 

Where a million dead men lie; 
And a million ghastly faces there 

Are mutely asking why. 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 359 

Why are the heavens red with hate 

From the cannons' angry flare ; 
Why must the eye of the pitying Christ 

See myriads dying there? 

Why from the Alps must the snow-fed streams 

With brave men's blood run red ; 
Why are the bodies of innocent babes 

Strewing the ocean's bed? 

What has happened, oh God, to your beautiful world, 

Aflame with the fury of death; 
What demon has banished sweet peace from the earth 

And loosened Hell's withering breath? 



FOUR: BY REVEREND CORNELIUS WOELFKIN, D.D. 

I think I shall be able to sense the fitness of things at least by 
telling you at once that I will not make a speech, because any 
word that might be said at this time by one who is a resident 
of this City, and especially one of my sex, after these addresses, 
would be in the nature of an anti-climax. Indeed, I came to 
the meeting a bit under a misapprehension to-day. Every new 
experience teaches us something, and the kind gentleman who 
invited me to this feast sent me his letter when I was far away 
from home, giving no indication that I was to make an address, 
but asking a telegraphic acceptance of his invitation, and by 
that request I saw long waiting lists of those who would be 
most eager and anxious to come, and I was beguiled and 
immediately sent a telegram that I would come. I did not know 
that I would be in for a speech. It is always a dangerous thing 
to ask a preacher to do it, because you know we have our 
wheatless days and our meatless days ; we have had our heatless 
days, and I who travel on the subway have always a seatless day, 
and I thought to-day might be added as a speechless day! But 
when a minister becomes tongue-tied, his house burns up. 

It is always a bit dangerous to ask a man to speak when 
he does not know the general subject. He might be under a 
misapprehension. The very day that I got this letter of invita- 
tion I was registered where a native of England was recruiting 
English-speaking and Canadian subjects, and on that very day a 
man fifty-three years of age, of Irish extraction, but with a 
body that was about thirty-two years old, walked in. He was 
a little bit the worse for the fire-water that he had drunk. When 
he was accepted, he said, "I want to go right away." "Well," 
they said, "when can you arrange your affairs?" "They are 



360 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

all arranged; I want to go right away — to-night." "When do 
you want to go across?" "As soon as I can." The officer 
said, "Well, I pity the Germans when you get across." "The 
Germans!" said he. "It's the dom English I'm after." 

In a subject like this one may get on the wrong trail, and 
it is always a preacher's temptation, at least, to get on the trail 
that he thinks will be the best paying. I was born and brought 
up in the City. I was born within three stones' throw of where 
we now are, and as a boy I remember that we used to have a 
little cross-town "Jigger-line" we called it, on Spring Street, 
where there were two cars that did the entire traffic, and the 
man who ran the car had to be conductor and driver and all. 
One day a new man was engaged and he was told by the superin- 
tendent, "You will have to drum up trade there, because the 
last man has only been bringing in about $1.50 a day and it 
doesn't pay to run the car for that." So he started out and the 
first day he brought in $18.50, and the superintendent said, 
"Man, how did you ever do it?" "Oh," he said, "I made two 
trips on Spring Street, but that's the divil of a slow line, so I 
swung into the Bowery." 

Now, may I say that from the standpoint of the preacher, 
I do not think that I have ever listened to three more eloquent, 
more moving, more divinely inspired addresses than we have 
had here this afternoon. I have a little heart-touch with some 
of the things that have been spoken here. I could speak to you 
also, as did our last speaker, about the soldiers in camp, for I 
have been working among them since last summer. I have 
seen those boys and have tried to find what is behind them. In 
my weeks of sojourn at Camp Dix I have only offered three 
prayers that have not been cheered by the boys, and that is a 
refreshing experience for a preacher — to have a prayer cheered 
— but the applause is always due to the fact that I asked those boys 
first how many of you have mothers at home for whom you would 
give your life, how many have sisters and sweethearts ?" And when 
we have lifted them up in prayer, those boys by that applause 
practically said that their lives were dedicated to the loyalty of 
that tie which is the tie that God breathes between mothers and 
their children's hearts. Only last Sunday, across the river here 
in camp, a boy received his orders that he was to sail at two 
o'clock on Monday morning. At two o'clock in the afternoon 
he made inquiries as to how much it would cost to telephone to 
Portland. Discovering that it would cost him $25.00 on that 
day, he went out and got one hundred silver quarters, for it was 
a slot machine. He walked before that booth from two o'clock 
till six. He did not go to his meals; he stayed there until ten 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 361 

o'clock at night, when he got his answer and counted in one 
hundred quarters into the machine. He spoke for five minutes 
with his mother and he said, "Thank God, I didn't go without 
hearing her voice again." What will a. lad like that do when 
he is far away from home? The instinct that manifests itself 
in a symbol of that kind can be trusted. 

I know that we hear of temptations in the camp; I 
know that we hear of the sins abroad; I know that we 
hear of a great many lapses and a great many failures. I 
receive some letters that indicate them ; but, let me say to you 
that sin is always the thing that gets itself cheaply advertised; 
the great mass of virtue which outnumbers it and outweighs 
it, is too modest to obtrude itself. Let us not fail to remember 
the proportion of things. The boys will be true and they will be 
strong. 

I am so glad that our women are coming into a more 
prominent place in our political life. I had a bit of suspicion 
about this meeting to-day. I just wondered why the ladies were 
invited to come to the Republican Club. I just wondered. I 
wondered whether there was going to be a proposal and an 
attempt at an engagement before the meeting was over ; whether 
they are going to teach you how to be politicians and how to be 
Republicans. Well, if you are invited to be Republicans, ladies, 
don't you do it. You flirt with them; you will have a dandy 
good time at it. There is something that goes out of a com- 
munity after an engagement is properly announced. You go to 
the Democrats — they need you ! They need a conversion, and 
they need a chastisement which we men have not successfully 
given to them, especially in our recent elections. And then, 
there is another good reason why you ought to go to the 
Democrats. I heard of a schoolmaster who asked three boys 
whose politics he knew, their reasons for their political faith, 
saying, "I caught a woodchuck this morning and the boy who 
gives me the best answer gets the woodchuck." "Joe, you are 
a Republican. Why?" "Because the Republicans saved this 
country in the great war of 1861 ; that's why." "John, why are 
you a Prohibitionist?" "Well, liquor is the worst thing in the 
world, and I want to put it out." "Jack, why are you a Demo- 
crat?" "I am a Democrat because I want that woodchuck." 
Now, if you will join the Democrats and get the woodchuck, 
you will be all the more welcome when you come back again, 
for at heart you are Republicans and can't be anything else. 

You are here to take up your new responsibilities now; not 
when the war is over, but in the midst of war. It would have 
been most untimely if the postponement of the suffrage had been 



362 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

delayed beyond the time of this war. This time was ripe for it 
now, when all things are in the crucible. We cannot afford to 
be without that fine sentiment and that refined, divine spirit which 
we have seen exhibited this afternoon without just this direct 
touch on the situation ; and I believe that many things in this 
world will go by reason of our good women marching by our 
side. They will not do as we men want them to do ; they won't 
simply be an addition; they won't be a repetition; but they will 
be a new creative power in the midst of the world at war, and 
that creative power which will become the most immediate and 
the most direct current of the Spirit of God. I don't think our 
men will fail because our women are behind them. Behind this 
conscripted army that goes forth is this army of women, mothers 
and sisters and wives and daughters who will pay the price, pay 
it gladly. I know whereof I speak. I know that there will be 
no murmuring. 

The earliest memory that is burned in my little mind, that 
came to me as a memory of three years of age, was of a man 
in uniform going off to war. Every drop of blood in my veins 
is German blood. My father was born in Germany ; my mother 
was born in Germany; but at the first outbreak of the Civil 
War my father was one of the first to enlist and served his time. 
In 1863 he reenlisted, and served his time in the Southern 
Squadron, and when his time was out he did not come home, but 
stayed on. That boat went down, and my father was a martyr 
for our American cause and I never heard that widowed mother 
murmur a word of complaint; but always laying her hand on her 
young boy's head saying that she hoped that some day I would 
be worthy of such a father, whether it be in days of war or in 
the days of peace. 

And here also may I say that we have a great many people in 
this country who are not only pro-Germans but absolutely traitors 
to the cause, and we ought to apprehend them and deal with them 
severely and justly. 

And then, I cannot help but feel that there are thousands 
upon thousands of descendants of Germans, like myself, whose 
blood is red, white and blue to the last drop. 

Now, I am not going on with my speech. I had a few 
thoughts put down, but I am going to let them pass. I am 
simply going to hope and believe that we shall now come to 
the place where, together with our allies, we shall face our 
responsibility toward men, which is a divine duty. 

Serbia and France have struck the greatest blow for liberty 
that ever human history has known, and England with her navy 
has been the salvation of our nation. We owe a lasting debt 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 363 

of gratitude to those nations because they have been patient and 
long-suffering to understand us. It is perfectly natural that we 
should be so slow. We sometimes say it was tragic that there 
was no readiness on the part of the Allies for the war. From 
the idealistic and spiritual and religious standpoint, I say it is 
forever to the credit of England, France and America that they 
were not ready for the war. It showed that our hope and 
aspiration had got far beyond the thought of any war ; but since 
now we are in the war, we are in together. 

The hour is come now for America to bear her cross. 
Our day of suffering is coming upon us. "As our day, 
so shall our strength be." God will keep us in the midst 
of it; God will keep us through it; and God will help us 
to give a better world to our children. If the Hun wins this 
war, the world is not going to be worth living in, and I would 
rather die trying to get rid of the Hun than to live and survive 
and see his victory. Let us believe in this matter that we are 
allies of God ; that it is the cross of our Lord and Saviour who 
gave Himself for humanity that goes before us, and that in this 
war we are bearing His cross. 

In the meantime, let us not deceive ourselves with any false 
hopes. There is a verse from the Holy Scriptures that ought 
to be burned into the heart of America to-day, above every 
other verse of the Old Testament, and that is this, the rebuke 
which comes against those which say "Peace, peace, when there 
is no peace." This is no time for peace. This is a time for war. 
The time for peace will be when we have broken the power of 
iniquity with the help of our God and when there has been 
righteous punishment laid upon the people who have shattered all 
the foundations of righteousness and truth. Then may we talk of 
peace ; but until then peace ought to be obsolete for the time being. 
And while we do that, let us remember that God looks to us to 
do our part. I am being asked by people daily, "Why does not 
God end the war? Why do so many prayers go up to the Al- 
mighty and yet this awful, horrible war with all that it involves 
drags on ?" I have no better answer than that given in a little poem 
that was written by Robert Underwood Johnson, sometime editor 
of the "Century," which I would like to quote in closing. It is a 
poem which is entitled "The Answer of the Lord." 

"How long, O Lord, how long" — 

A myriad voices cry — 
"Shall wanton powers of wrong 

Thy sacred laws defy? 



364 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

The dead are like the sand, 

And woe and misery 
The sea bears to the land, 

The rivers to the sea. 

"The innocent are slain 

At Mercy's bolted door; 
The infant's wail is vain, 

For pity is no more. 
When shall the ruin cease 

And Thou confound the strong? 
Till the white days of peace 

How long, O Lord, how long?" 

"How long, O men, how long, 

Lift ye weak hands to me 
To rid you of great wrong? 

For this I left you free. 
A million years have gone 

To grow the perfect flower; 
I reared you from the spawn 

To fit you for this hour. 

"I took you from the ooze 

Ere yet man measured time; 
I gave you mind, to choose; 

I gave you soul, to climb. 
I willed you unafraid 

Of all, — nay, more: that ye, 
Though in Mine image made, 

Should not be slaves of Me. 

"I gave you Law, to guide, 

That needed not My hand; 
With Reason, to decide, 

And Conscience, to command. 
Ye are not beast or tree; 

Ye are not stone or clod; 
Your upward path is free, 

Ye are the sons of God. 

"And shall ye then descend 

From your divine estate 
The craven neck to bend 

And call the yoke your fate? 
Wake from the sloth of night 

And drain life's precious bowl! 
The hour has come to smite, 

Or lose a people's soul. 

"Think not that I am dumb, 
Though ye be long withstood; 

Ye serve an age to come 
Who war for brotherhood. 



THE WOMEN OF 1918 365 

Delay not to release 

The arrow from its yew: 
I, who am God of Peace, 

Am God of Battle, too. 

"Then lift ye up staunch hearts, 

Make strong your hands of skill, 
And by your righteous arts 

Be partners of My will. 
Your breath, by Me endowed, 

If need give back again, 
That I once more be proud 

That I have made you men." 



ELEVENTH DISCUSSION 

MARCH SIXTEENTH, I918 
FIGHTING THE DRAGON 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 



ONE: BY SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH 

President, Carnegie Institute 

Once I saw in the British Museum the manuscript of the very 
first piece of literature which came to break the intellectual 
darkness of England — the story of Beowulf, who came into a 
country not his own and saved the lives of the people by slaying 
the dragon, but losing his own life in the battle. That is the 
splendid mission of America — to go into a country not her own 
and save the lives of the people by slaying a dragon, and if in 
doing that she is required to sacrifice a part of her own life — 
as indeed she has already done — why then I believe that the 
scriptural promise is true of nations as of individuals, "He that 
loseth his life shall find it." 

I heard a distinguished man say the other day that this is a 
war of ideas, that it is a war between the two systems, autocracy 
and democracy. I think that man was wrong. Whenever you 
say that it is a war of ideas, you make it a matter of choice, 
and you give ground to the pro-German, the slacker and the 
pacifist to say that they are halting between two opinions. It 
is not a war of ideas. It is a war caused by the fact that 
Germany has invaded Belgium and France and entered upon an 
international debauch of murder, outrage and plunder. There 
is no conflict of ideas in that situation, and the civilized nations 
of the globe have combined their forces of manhood and chivalry 
and they are saying : "We are going to drive you out of Belgium 
and out of France and make you pay the bill I" and when we say 
"out of France" we mean out of Alsace and Lorraine. 

America is in this war because she was directly attacked 
by Germany. Her ships were sunk, her foreign trade was de- 
stroyed, her territory was threatened with partition, her industrial 
plants were blown up, her people were murdered, and all this 
and much else furnished the immediate justification to take her 
part in the strife. She is on the battle line in France because if 
she were not there her battle line would be New York in less 
than six months. But I like to think, and so do you, that 
notwithstanding these particular grievances our country was 

369 



370 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

really moved to action by the higher call to human service in 
the world's task of saving civilization from those who are assault- 
ing its foundations. But while your boy and mine are carrying 
the flag in France, let us see to it that there is no weakening in 
the spirit of the nation at home, from which those boys draw 
their fortitude just as surely as they drew their milk from their 
precious mothers a few short years ago. We have lately had 
the story in the papers of four American soldiers sentenced to 
death for sleeping at their posts. Now if an American soldier 
is going to be shot for going to sleep at his post and endangering 
the front, we should demand that every German spy and prop- 
agandist shall be shot for endangering the rear. The other 
day a deserter from the Army said that he had been 
corrupted from his loyalty by reading Senator La Follette's 
speech. The boy was sent to prison, and the man who cor- 
rupted him ought to be expelled from the United States Senate 
as a public nuisance. 

We can never overcome the foe in front unless we shall 
effectively restrain the foe at the rear. The test of loyalty is a 
simple one. There are no longer any German-Americans. That 
name is dead forever. They are either Germans or they are 
Americans. No man cherishes a higher regard than I do for 
those American citizens of German birth or German parentage 
who are truly able to unite their love for our flag with their 
detestation of this German outrage. There are millions of 
former Germans in this country who are now fully absorbed, 
heart, soul and language, into the great body of Americanism. 
I know hundreds of such men in Pittsburgh, and you have 
hundreds of them here in New York — like Mr. Franz Sigel, 
Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, Mr. Otto H. Kahn and the society known 
as "The Friends of German Democracy" — men of such probity 
and honor all through our nation that we would trust them to 
hold control of the chief citadel against the Kaiser himself. 
A good many years ago I had the honor of meeting Carl Schurz, 
at Deer Park, Md., and that gifted man, whose name is illustrious 
in American history, came over to a group of us young men 
where we were seated under the cool shade of a great oak tree, 
and after shaking hands with a cordiality which became to each 
one a living memory, pointed to the flag over the hotel and told 
us that we should feel grateful in our hearts that we were all 
citizens in a country where liberty had free existence, as it has 
been his own unhappy fate to be driven out of Germany because 
of the tyranny of feudal system, and that there would be 
no liberty for the German people until that feudal system was 
destroyed. I wish that the former countrymen of that former 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 371 

German would absorb this doctrine into their secret souls, for 
the German government is more autocratic to-day than when 
it drove Carl Schurz into exile and executed thousands of his 
associates who had attempted to reform it. 

But there are other Germans in this country who, whether 
they are naturalized or not, can never be anything but Germans 
in heart, soul and language, and we detest these people because 
they are not only false to America, which they have chosen so 
that they and their descendants may live a larger and freer life, 
but because they are false to that better Germany which their 
fathers tried to create, and failing to create came to this country 
in order to enjoy the liberty which was denied to them in 
Germany. The revelations which have just now been made 
before the Congressional Committee in regard to the German- 
American Alliance shows that this spirit of Germanism is an 
insidious and constant poison in the heart of our nation. Mr. 
Theodore Sutro, of New York City, gave expression to the soul 
of this faithless citizenship when he testified that the song 
"Deutschland Uber Alles" means that Germans are over all 
other countries in their devotion to Germany. I think you will 
remember that the first manifestation of this German poison in 
our national life occurred about twenty-five years ago when 
Cahensley, a member of the German Parliament, proposed that 
all emigrants to the United States should be preserved in their 
native languages, customs, religions and manners and not 
nationalized into the real citizenship of the American people. A 
very courageous and far-seeing statesman, a dear friend of mine, 
Cushman K. Davis, from Minnesota, attacked that proposition 
in the United States Senate, giving it the name of Cahensleyism, 
a word which you will find in the Century Dictionary accredited 
to him as its coiner, and his speech upset that plan in so far as 
it was intended to be an open campaign. But the snake was only 
scotched, not killed. The iniquitous principle of the double 
sovereignty has enabled Germany to keep a deathless grip upon 
the loyalty of thousands of her former citizens who have been 
naturalized in this country, and when the hour of our danger 
arrives and we find ourselves attacked, these children of our 
adoption turn against us in faithless allegiance varying in degree 
all the way from sullen hatred to active sedition, riot and murder. 

Another source of constant danger is the German newspapers 
which are published in this country. In New York you have 
the StaatsZeltung. One of its editors, Mr. Bernard H. Ridder, 
came to Pittsburgh a year or more ago and did me the honor to 
challenge me to a public debate on the righteousness of Germany's 
cause, and he offered to pay all the expenses of the enterprise. 



372 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

I hope it is needless to say that the debate never took place. But 
soon afterwards the State Department at Washington made its 
revelations of the Bernstorfl expenditures, and you will remem- 
ber that $20,000 of this propaganda fund was paid to the 
Ridders. Since that time Mr. Ridder has repeatedly and sneer- 
ingly attacked Colonel Roosevelt, James M. Beck and other 
earnest citizens as firebrands and fools whenever they have 
spoken for our country. Mr. Viereck's paper was excluded from 
the mails last week because it printed a seditious article. In 
Pittsburgh we have a German newspaper which has recently 
declared that the Declaration of Independence ought to be 
burned by the common hangman, and I have within these past 
few days seen a letter from the editor of that paper, Mr. George 
Seibel, protesting against the use of the word "Huns" as com- 
monly applied to the German people. So it goes with these 
German newspapers all over the land. They are at present held 
in a sullen and malignant restraint by the new law which their 
own treasonable conduct made it necessary to enact. But while 
moving now with due caution they all show an ill-disguised wish 
that Germany shall win this war. Who has ever read one word 
of denunciation of German outlawry in any of these publications? 
The German diplomat who telegraphed his government to sink 
the Argentine ships and leave no trace, was criticized by the 
German newspapers in this country not because of his infamous 
plan, fully approved in Berlin, to murder the crews and passen- 
gers of a nation with which his country was at peace, but because 
his correspondence was intercepted and printed. The Bible takes 
the measure of these men and all men like them when it declares, 
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." There is but one 
safe course for the Government to take, and that is to suspend 
all these German language newspapers for the period of the war, 
and until they are suspended each community should require 
as a mark of loyalty that no American who seeks to be respected 
by his neighbors shall either read them or advertise in them. 

This war has shown us that we should love our country better 
than anything in this world except humanity, and we should 
love humanity best because our country is a part of humanity. 
This is a lesson which has come to my own mind since the 
outbreak of this war, but I verily believe the principle I am 
trying to express gives us a correct interpretation of the parable 
of the Good Samaritan which was told two thousand years ago, 
in order that we men in America might be taught that every 
other man in the world who needs our help, whether he lives in 
France or Belgium or China or the heart of Africa, is just as 
much our neighbor as the man who lives next door to us. It 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 373 

is the German people's lack of understanding of this fundamental 
principle which has brought the war upon us. No German ever 
talks about humanity except with contempt, and the German 
Emperor in one of his speeches has said that when he surveys 
the human family his vision ends with the boundary of the 
German Empire. The spread of this feeling of true brotherhood 
throughout the world will wipe away the bigoted conception of 
nationality and the provoking restrictions of geography which 
have up to this time been sufficiently strong to array every 
community against every other community. 

It is frightful to contemplate the continued existence of the 
German Empire as it stands to-day — "a Thing," says President 
Wilson in speaking of it, "a Thing without conscience or honor 
or capacity for covenanted peace." Why? Because its only 
guiding power is military force. It is frightful to think that 
there exists in the heart of the world a military power which has 
declared with a thousand articulate and vociferous voices that 
it intends to subjugate the whole of Europe in this war. The 
leading purpose in this world conquest is to enslave and not to 
elevate the people who dwell in the peaceful territories of her 
neighbors. Is proof needed ? Take Alsace and Lorraine. During 
the fifty years of German occupation not one word of benevolent 
interest in the welfare of those hapless children of old France 
has been uttered by Germany. She has ruled them as she is now 
ruling Belgium and northern France — with her mailed fist. She 
has not even permitted them to speak their own language or 
sing their own songs. When a lame Alsatian shoemaker looked 
askance at a troop of German soldiers, the officer drew his 
sword and cut the poor man through the shoulder, and the 
Crown Prince of Germany telegraphed to that poltroon that 
he had done a noble act of chivalry in assaulting the cripple. 
Let me show you a contrast between a civilized and humane 
nation and a nation which Goethe characterized as ferocious 
brutes. When this war began there came the test of British 
civilization. It was a good time for England's colonies to 
cut loose and leave her to fight her own battle. She had no 
power to coerce one man outside of her own little island king- 
dom. What was the result? You have seen that picture in 
"Punch" where the British Lion stands on a mound emitting a 
roar which only a lion can emit, a roar which comes from the 
depths of his nature, and from every quarter of the globe his 
cubs respond — Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Egypt. 
How was it with Germany ? When the first blast of war blew on 
our ears, when Germany had been ruling those French provinces 
for half a century, fifty thousand of the men of Alsace and 



374 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

Lorraine gave up home and property and fled across the border 
to range themselves under the only flag their hearts could ever 
recognize, the ancient oriflamme of France. Not a man who 
could escape the impressment would fight for Germany. And 
take England once more. She had conquered South Africa and 
given the Boers a complete liberty and self-government of which 
they had never dreamed in the days of their own tyrant, Paul 
Kreuger. But here was their chance to revolt. Did they take 
it? When they saw peril approaching that precious heritage of 
human government which has been expanding itself throughout 
the world from the day when the Mighty Charter was established 
on British soil at Runnymede the last Boer turned from his 
farm and his mine and joined the fight for liberty under the 
British flag. 

And how is it with France ? If it is ever possible that all the 
nations of the world can be assembled on some Elysian Field 
where a divine Commander-in-Chief shall ask, "Which among 
these nations has in ancient or modern times shown the most 
valor, sacrifice and suffering ?" I am sure that all mankind with 
one voice will respond. "It is France !" We can say of her now, 
as Shakespeare said of her in the time of King John, "France, 
whose armor conscience buckled on, whom zeal and charity 
brought to the field, as God's own soldier." 

I confess that I do not quite understand Mr. Taft's plan for a 
League to Enforce Peace after this war is ended. Suppose we 
were to have such a league at the end of the war and that Ger- 
many should then make another attack — this Germany which 
President Wilson says is without conscience or honor or capacity 
for covenanted peace ? Would we not be precisely where we are 
now ? Is it not a fact that we have already formed ourselves into 
a League to Enforce Peace and that our sole purpose is now, as 
it would be then, to restrain Germany from murdering her neigh- 
bors? We have formed that League, but we have not gone far 
enough. In trying to tread the path of honor, with Shakespeare 
says is so narrow that but one can walk abreast, we have lacked 
determination and insistence. We have not been bold enough 
in our plans. We must now carry our organization into magni- 
tudes which no man has yet thought of. 

The question now is whether Japan shall move by land against 
Germany in the Far East. That brings up Russia. Everybody 
has a profound sympathy for Russia. The trouble there is that 
the people of Russia have been held through all these centuries 
in a pitiable ignorance and superstition. The illiteracy there is 
more than eighty per cent of the total population, and when they 
have overthrown an oppressive and corrupt government by revolu- 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 375 

tion it is a moving and pathetic sight to see them without knowl- 
edge or experience or the capacity to form a government go plung- 
ing every day deeper and deeper into the abyss of civil strife and 
general anarchy. Great things were hoped for from Mr. Keren- 
sky. But the task was too large for him — possibly it was too 
large for any other man. Then came Lenine and Trotzky. We 
do not know yet whether they are incompetent dreamers or cor- 
rupt German agents, but we do know that they have wrought the 
complete disintegration of Russia. Just think of it! When 
France was looking for a military genius worthy to succeed the 
mighty Joffre, and when England was retiring Sir John French 
in order to put the best soldier in the Empire at the front, Lenine 
and Trotzky reduced their trained officers to the ranks and 
elevated a ranting youth who had never seen service to be gen- 
eralissimo. Is it any wonder that the Russian army fell away like 
a rope of sand? But somewhere in Russia there are many mil- 
lions of people who represent the best progress of that race and 
who stand ready, as quickly as a capable leader can force his way 
to the front, to establish a government which shall maintain law 
and order, and in the best way preserve the Revolution for the 
good of the whole population. In the meantime, the fear lest 
we may give these crafty Russian adventurers, Lenine and Trotz- 
ky, an excuse to unite their disrupted forces with Germany is 
holding back our statesmen from employing the almost inexhaust- 
ible military resources of Japan and China in this mighty task of 
our League to Enforce Peace. Don't let us forget Lloyd George's 
declaration of two years ago : "We are always too late !" Don't 
let us forget that while we constantly hesitate and thereby lose 
every advantage, Germany works ceaselessly with her military 
forces, her corruption funds, and her sleepless propaganda to 
win the war. Mr. Taft said in Pittsburgh the other day, that he 
wants an American army of five millions. That is the right way 
to start. But we must do more. We must organize the world 
in its remotest parts in this fight to restrain the outlaw. Let us 
induce Japan and China to come in with their fullest force. We 
know that they will come with clean hands and a pure heart. 
In calling Japan at a critical hour we mean to save Russia from 
shameful and complete dismemberment and to start her upon that 
slow process of uplift which can be reached not in the first stroke 
of revolt but only in the lengthened flight of years. As to Japan, 
there is something to be said, although not on this occasion, con- 
cerning Japanese immigration. It is enough to say now that we 
cannot hold Japan in the permanent bonds of a confiding friend- 
ship, as we should profoundly desire to do, while we shut the gates 
of hospitality against her people. 



376 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

And in the employment of force against Germany we should 
not stop with Japan and China. We need every ounce of hitting 
power which the world can give us. There is India with her 
enormous resources, loyal and ready to play a great part. Brazil 
should be encouraged to move her army and navy at once to 
Europe; and so should every other nation either great or small 
who has thus far joined our League — Panama and Cuba among 
them. And with those nations which still are neutral let us plead 
the cause of humanity to induce them to take their part — Argen- 
tina and all the others on this side, and those six powers still at 
peace in Europe — Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland 
and Switzerland — who have been so brutally abused by Germany, 
Norway alone having had eight hundred of her ships sunk and 
more than five thousand of her citizens murdered without a trace 
on the high seas. Then shall we have all the banners of civiliza- 
tion floating together on those battle fronts both west and east of 
Germany, and we shall soon crush her into submission. 

And after that the judgment. I am not preaching any gospel 
of hate, but I am preaching a gospel of punishment and expiation. 
The group of men who made this war should be brought to trial 
and execution. And then will come the creatures who so glee- 
fully did the foul work. When we seek a phrase to express our 
abhorrence of these people we must go back to a spiritual and 
intellectual Germany that is dead and gone and find their con- 
demnation in their own greatest prophet: "The Prussian," said 
Goethe, "is cruel by birth ; civilization will make him ferocious." 
And that is true. He has indeed become ferocious. The pro- 
Germans are excusing all the German atrocities on the plea that 
such outrages are natural to a state of war. They are not natural 
to a state of war with anybody but the Germans. Let us give 
you a contrast. Women have been the especial prey of the Ger- 
man, both officers and private soldiers, from the very beginning 
of the war. Ambassador Penfield and Madame Carrell have told 
us of their personal knowledge of these outrages at Noyon and 
other rescued cities, and of the beastly and degenerate ferocity 
which has marked them. Lord Bryce gives a horrible story of 
the forced assembling of a group of good women in the public 
square of the city of Liege where the German officers and men in 
an orgy of lust and in the gaze of the whole population subjected 
them to the last indignity that can be put upon womanhood. That 
is the ogre's conception of frightfulness when it is commanded 
unto him by the Great General Staff. But how is it in the Ameri- 
can army? Since our troops arrived in Europe there has been 
one, and only one, case of outrage, and the soldier was not shot — 
he was immediately hanged. That is the thing against which the 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 377 

world is fighting — that spirit of the German people to conquer, 
destroy, ravish, and kill everything that is not German. That 
spirit exists in an abundant and malignant plenitude here in New 
York, it exists all over America, it faces us on the French battle 
front, and it will continue to fill the world with horror until we 
say to it : "You damned assassin, we have you by the throat, and 
we are going to keep a strangle hold on you until we cast out this 
devil from your soul !" 

Oh, my friends, this bloodshed will have been in vain if we 
are going to add reconciliation to peace without the penitence of 
the criminal. Von Bissing says there must be no reconciliation 
but only a rest in order to prepare for the next war. Von Freytag, 
their Deputy Chief of the Great General Staff, has published a 
book within this last month saying the same thing. Even while 
von Hertling was making his adroit speech in avoidance of peace 
in the Reichstag, General von Liebert was giving utterance to 
the real mind of Germany in these words : "We hold that Might 
is Right. We will incorporate Courland and bring into our own 
population 60,000,000 Russians. We must have Belgium and the 
north of France. The curse of God is upon the French people; 
let us consider ourselves fortunate that he has separated us from 
that people which is as ungodly as it is infamous. The Portuguese 
colonial possessions must disappear. France must be made to pay 
until she is bled white." The Emperor says that he will have no 
peace until with bloody fist he has crushed his victims to the earth. 
He wants no reconciliation. Neither should we. Let us show 
Germany by a hundred years of social and commercial ostracism 
that her crime is beyond forgiveness until her children's children 
beg for it with contrite hearts. And in the meantime mobilizing 
without further delay all the resources of our civilization, let us 
develop and press forward with our holy crusade until we shall 
have rescued Belgium and France and Italy and all the oppressed 
countries from the grasp of the Barbarian, and established the 
world upon the foundations of righteousness, so that liberty shall 
walk unafraid and leaning upon the arm of law. 



TWO: BY RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE 

I do not wish to begin my address by launching into any differ- 
ence with the gentleman who has preceded me, for I agree with 
nine-tenths of what he has said. I do, however, believe, and I do 
not wish to omit to say that I hope that we Americans are going 
to make up our minds that, if Russia needs military help and sup- 



378 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

port in the East that help will come from Japan and from us to- 
gether, and that no foreign army, whether our own or Japan's, 
is to be forced on Russia. The one thing we must not for a 
moment suffer the Russian people to believe is that we, too, are 
bent on Russian spoliation and dismemberment. We are the 
friends of Russia and of Russian freedom, and if we have the 
courage to trust the President of the United States as we ought 
to do and follow our own best and most unselfish judgment, we 
are going to keep the Russian people as our friends. 

The question is not one of offending either Japan or Russia. 
Russia best knows whether she needs help. If she refuse foreign 
help, we may not insist on forcing upon her either our own or 
Japan's help. I trust that the Russian people — not Germany's 
agents in Russia, — will understand that Japan is a friend, that 
we are the best of her friends, and that the time may not be far 
distant when on the Western front — I mean the reconstructed 
Western front of Russia, — Germany will be met and overwhelmed 
by the forces of Russia, Japan and the United States. 

The easiest thing in time of war is peace-mongering. 
I go back to a gentleman of my own race who, speak- 
ing with withering scorn, referred twenty-five hundred 
years ago to them that cry "Peace, Peace, when there is 
no peace." Some men to-day in this land, as in all Allied lands, 
are devoting themselves to the dubious business of peace-monger- 
ing. Any man who to-day uses the word "Peace" can find an aud- 
ience and gain some kind of a hearing, can command some manner 
of assent from certain groups of so-called Americans. There 
has never been a moment since or before the second day of April, 
1917, when we were not ready for peace. We are ready for it 
to-day on one condition. The war was made in Germany. The 
peace shall be made by America and our Allies. 

In other words, we will have no German-made peace as we 
have had a German-manufactured war. I would bring it home 
to you if I can that there is danger lest certain groups of Amer- 
icans assent to the subtle and insidious and altogether menacing 
suggestion of those who cry that the day of peace has come, that 
the time for peace negotiations is at hand. One day these peace- 
mongers call themselves the People's Peace Council ; the next day 
they name themselves the American Bolsheviki. On the morrow 
they will style themselves the Friends of American Democracy. 

But I warn you that their purpose remains immutably the 
same. They speak peace, but what they are striving for is a peace 
that will be not only dishonoring to America but a peace that will 
bring about this tragedy of tragedies, graver even than war, — 
all that the civilized world shall have invested in life and sub- 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 379 

stance to defend itself against Kaiserism will have been in vain. 
In other words, we will go back to where we left off four years 
ago. That is the aim of the peace-mongers, — Germany pardoned . 
and free to resume her assault upon the peace of civilization. 

Men talk to us about a restoration of the status quo ante. The 
status quo ante, forsooth ! For one thing, we can never have the 
status quo ante. We cannot repair Belgium. We cannot restore 
France. What millions of barbarous soldiers have done, the 
civilized forces of humanity cannot undo. Some manner of repa- 
ration will not bring about restoration in Belgium, France, Serbia, 
Poland, Palestine and Armenia. The President of the United 
States, I dare to say, will never assent to a restoration of the status 
quo ante, and if the President of the United States should erringly 
demand that we, the American people, assent thereto, he would 
find that the American people were unready to follow him. He 
will never be so untrue to himself and to his record as their leader 
as to make any such demand of the American people. 

I ask you to consider what the status quo ante 
means or would mean. All of Europe would again dwell under 
the shadow of the Prussian menace. Belgium would be compelled 
to live again with the German gun pointed at her head. Serbia 
would renew its existence within the circle of Austrian greed and 
ambition. Poland would come under the influence of thwarted, 
though not vanquished, Germany. Switzerland, Holland, Den- 
mark, Norway and Sweden, alike intimidated into benevolent 
neutrality touching Germany, would stand cowed and fearful 
before the overflowing power of Prussian rule. The reestab- 
lishment of the status quo amte would mean that the world would 
say to Germany, — although you have committed the most malign 
and hideous crimes in the history of the world, you are to be 
greatly rewarded. The toleration by the non-Teutonic world of 
the status quo ante would be equivalent to setting the seal of ap- 
proval on the unspeakable deeds of the government and people, 
alike, which have violated the peace, invaded the security, and be- 
trayed the decencies of life everywhere. 

What are the terms offered to us by the gentlemen who in- 
dulge in the practices of peace-mongering ? Not very long ago, 
one of these asked, "Can we not have peace if Germany be ready 
to end her ruthless submarine warfare?" I answered, — Yes, we 
can have peace when Germany not only ends her submarine war- 
fare but when Germany becomes unable to resume her ruthless 
sub-human warfare on land, on sea and in the air. 

Again, the peace-mongers naively inquire, — Must we attain a 
military victory over Germany before there can be peace? I do 
not know anything about the military. I am the only one of a 



380 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

hundred million Americans inexpert in the science of military 
strategy. My acquaintance with the problems of armies is limited 
to the recollection of one single and incontrovertible fact that no 
American army was ever sent forth to do a job that it failed to 
do exactly as it was expected that it would be done. When 
these ask, — "Must we achieve a military victory over Ger- 
many?" — let us answer by asking another question, — "How are we 
going to make things Teutonically understandable unless we de- 
feat Germany in arms ? How can we hope to make anything Ger- 
manically intelligible unless we first administer a crushing blow to 
German military pride?" 

The men who plead for the restoration of the status quo ante 
tell us not without reluctance that Germany of course must not 
gain anything by the war, and they urge that upon us as if it 
involved a fair and just decision with respect to the terms of 
peace. But I believe that you and I represent the voice and con- 
science of the American people far better than do the People's 
Peace Council and the American Bolsheviki and the Friends of 
American Democracy in holding that Germany must emerge 
from this war not only without having gained an inch of territory 
anywhere, under any form, in any guise, and by any name. Ger- 
many must emerge from the war exactly as she entered it save for 
two illimitably important things, — she will have forfeited the 
goodwill and respect of the entire world until that day, if it ever 
come, when the German people shall have returned to moral sanity 
and by penitence in deed as well as in word have once again 
merited the respect of the world which she has wronged. Ger- 
many is not to emerge from this war without change, for, when 
the war ends, Germany must no longer be free or able to blight 
the life of nations with the menace of militarism of which her 
existence is incarnate. If Germany could emerge from the war 
with her military strength unbroken, with German autocracy un- 
shaken and undethroned, then we will have lost the war. We will 
have lost the war in truth unless we can bring it to pass and make 
it true of the whole world that while in the past Kaisers broke 
peace and made war, the peoples after this war shall have ended 
will break Kaisers and make peace. 

Let us earnestly consider the terms of peace that are offered. 
Going back for a moment to the Reichstag resolutions of last June, 
which it would appear were inspired if not written by some Amer- 
ican Bolsheviki, the German government then virtually promised 
that it would demand no annexations, that it would impose no 
indemnities, and that it placed its faith in national self-determina- 
tion. As for no annexations, let us remember the answer of von 
Kuhleman to the query, What is to be the fate of Belgium? His 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 381 

answer was : The fate of Belgium must be left in the hands of our 
future peace negotiators. 

Will you not assent to my word, harsh and inexorable though 
it seem? You and I would have one million, two million, three 
million, if necessary five millions of American boys go over there 
and there remain and put back of them half, yea if needs must the 
whole of the American fortune for investment in the war, and yet 
we would that no American boy, though every one be precious, 
come back to America until the last defiling, damning Prussian 
foot be forever removed from Belgian territory. 

With reference to Germany's solemn promise of no annexa- 
tions, it should be said that we must be fair to Germany, and it 
will be admitted that it is easy to be fair to Germany because it is 
almost impossible to be unfair to Germany. Germany may well 
guarantee no annexation. Germany never annexes, Germany 
peacefully permeates ; Germany beneficently pervades ; Germany 
in benedictory fashion penetrates; but Germany never annexes. 
Witness prostrate and dismembered Russia. And, alas, we are 
reminded of the word spoken last May at a meeting in New York 
that if Russia desert the Allies and make peace with Prussia, 
peace and liberty and democracy will for a time, if not for all 
time, forsake Russia. 

Once again I venture to prophesy, — namely, that broken, dis- 
membered, discrowned Russia is not the last word of history. 
The Russian democracy will have a rebirth and a thousand Prus- 
sians cannot permanently overwhelm and destroy Russia. In the 
meantime, what has Prussia, the friend of liberty, the saviour of 
small nations, the abhorrer of annexations, said to Russia? You 
are an unwieldy conglomerate of heterogeneous nationalities. The 
Ukraine must be separate and independent. Germany's mighty 
and irresistible passion for liberty outside of Germany would not 
permit her to live while the poor, bleeding Ukraine was under the 
heel of tyrannical Russia. It insisted upon the freedom of Livonia 
and Esthonia. It demanded the independence of Finland. It laid 
down as a condition that Lithuania must no longer be subject to a 
foreign power. And to prove the genuineness of her faith, Ger- 
many partitioned Poland anew, repeating the infamy of a century 
and a half ago, giving a great slice of Poland to Austria on the one 
hand, and a lesser slice to unrelated Ukraine on the other. Foul- 
est and most dastardly of all, in violation of her guarantee of no 
annexations is Germany's threat, that shall never be more than a 
threat, to take from Russia the sole remaining Armenian province 
to which the Armenian refugees have fled, the one place where 
Armenians have found shrine and shelter from the Mohammedan 
Apaches, and to turn Armenian Russia over to the almost worthy 



382 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

confederate of Germany and Austria, that assassinocracy which is 
known by the name of the Turkish government. 

Germany has added "No indemnities." Germany does not 
need further indemnities. She has commandeered the granaries 
of the Ukraine; she has seized the inexhaustible oil-wells of the 
Armenian-Russian Batum region. Germany has richly indemni- 
fied herself. There was another way of her indemnifying herself, 
— that is territorially. Her indemnity has taken this form: she 
has broken Russia. 

And now beguiling voices will be lifted up, pleading, "Let 
us now make peace with Germany." This is our opportunity. 
Germany will be satisfied to release Belgium, to free northern 
France, even to restore Alsace-Lorraine ; and Germany will com- 
pensate herself only in the East. 

The truth is we rest under no legal obligation toward 
Russia; we are bound by no international bond to Rus- 
sia to-day, technically speaking. Officially and legally, we 
are free to enter into any arrangements we desire, without any 
reference to Russia ; but still would I warn you against this un- 
American and immoral urging. This war is in some part the pun- 
ishment of Heaven upon a world, which suffered Prussia to 
destroy and to dismember France in 1871. We left the crime of 
1871 unpunished and unrighted. While we suffered that wrong 
to go unrequited, Prussia turned to Bavaria, to Baden, to Saxony : 
"Lo and behold, this is the first of our spoils. If you become 
part of the newly cemented German Confederation and make us 
the master thereof, in forty years we shall give you Belgium." 
Such was the prize which the Prussians were suffered to hold 
out to all the German States. 

We can make peace with Germany if we will and let Russia 
surrender to Germany and thus become a victim of Prussian wile 
and wrongdoing; but if we do our crime shall not go un- 
avenged. Desert Russia, — and I am not unmindful of the fact 
that my people, my fellow- Jews, have suffered incalculable wrong 
at the hands of the old Rusian government, but I am not thinking 
of what my fellow-Jews have suffered ; I am thinking of world- 
morality, — desert Russia now, and the vengeance of history will 
be meted out to us for our crime. The war of 1914 is the 
world's punishment for the unrighted wrong of 1871 ; and if we, 
taking advantage of legal status, desert Russia now, we will in 
time face another more terrible war even than this war. The 
war we can and will win. Germany is defeatable to-day. Ger- 
many reinforced after ten or twenty years by Russia's millions 
might prove undefeatable. 

"No annexations; no indemnities; national self-determina- 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 388 

tion." Thus spoke the German Reichstag. What could be more 
amusing than "national self-determination" as an article of the 
German creed? Do you not know that the war is being 
fought around that issue? In the last analysis, this war 
is being fought around this one simple, unmistakable issue, — 
namely, Germany maintains that every nation in the world has 
a right to live, provided it can defend itself at the point of the 
sword ; America and the Allies hold that every nation, small or 
great, has the right to live, whether or not it can safeguard itself 
by force of arms. In other words Germany proclaims the right 
of Might, and we continue to rest our faith in the might of inter- 
national Right. 

One thing the American Bolsheviki, the American peace- 
mongers, may hope to do to you and me. They plan to lead us to 
believe their two equally false theses : first, that this is "just a war, 
just another war." Nothing could be more false. This is not a 
war at all; it is not "just another war," as if England and Ger- 
many, as if America and Germany, had simply made up their I 
minds that the time had come for another war. The truth is that 
President Wilson did not set out to war with Germany until the 
day that he found we were challenged not so much to go to war 
as to defend the elementary sanctities of life. Far from being a 
war or another war, it is me war; it is the war of wars; it is the 
war against the war-plotting, war-making, war-glorifying powers 
of earth. Not Jess false is it to hint after the fashion of the] 
American IJoTsTievTl^~^this is just a capitalistic war; a war be- 
tween the English capitalists and the German capitalists." About 
the only thing from this point of view which has not yet been 
claimed is that the Morgan Company or some other English or 
American banker moved the German army and navy to assassi- 
nate Captain Fryatt and Edith Cavell, and to do all those lovely 
things which will for centuries be associated with the name of 
Germany. 

This is not a capitalist war; you and I — and they — know 
better than that. The aim of the peace-mongers, however, is to 
enfeeble the will, to shake the morale, of the American people. 
They speak of and demand a larger measure of democracy at 
home. But when these peace-mongers have come to me to join in 
their demand for completer democracy at home, I turn to them 
and say: "Gentlemen, show us your credentials. You speak of 
democracy at home, but you are ready and even eager to have the 
world come under the domination of German autocracy. What 
say you of the Germany that invaded Russia and broke Russia not 
alone nor even chiefly to divide and despoil Russia, least of all to 
make peace in or with Russia, but to teach the German proletar- 



384 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

iat that democracy was a failure, as tried in Russia." Democracy 
has not been tried in Russia. Anarchy tempered by German-sub- 
sidized autocracy, has been tried in Russia. Democracy has not 
been tried in Russia, and will not be tried until after the day that 
we dictate the terms of a democratic and civilized peace to the 
German government and people. 

As I close, I say to you yet again : Beware of the voices 
lifted up on behalf of peace-mongering. 

There can be but one other reason for peace-mongering at this 
time, the fact that men not a few in America would have this war 
end in a truce. Such a truce obtained before the war began. 
Remember what that truce was and what it meant. It meant that 
all Europe, as we know, was a vast armed camp. The American 
Bolsheviki are pleading for the restoration of the status quo ante 
for one of two reasons, that militarism be magnified as never be- 
fore in the history of the world, or else that such be the military 
burdens borne by the peoples as to bring about almost immediately 
the world-wide social revolution, for which the American Bolshe- 
r viki "are hoping and at which they are aiming. 

There is a great gulf fixed between the American peace- 
mongers and those of us who are American peace-lovers. 
The American peace-mongers are not Americans. They desire 
peace either for Germany's sake or for war's sake. And we are 
willing to go on, to endure war at any cost, at every sacrifice in 
the world, not for the sake of America alone, not for the sake of 
the world, but for the sake of peace, just and enduring. 
'Tis man's perdition to be safe when for the truth he ought 
to die. America is willing to die, but not to surrender to Prus- 
sianism and all that Prussianism means as menace to the decencies 
of peace, the sanctities of freedom, the nobleness of American life. 
We are going on and we are going to win the war, not with the 
help of that Prussian godlet whom the Kaiser invokes; we are 
going to win the war with the help of the God of the Heavens, 
who is just, whose prophet has declared to us not "Peace, peace, 
when there is no peace," but peace such as "shall be the work of 
righteousness" forever. 



THREE: DR. ROSALIE SLAUGHTER MORTON 

Of the American Woman's Hospital Headquarters 

As I listened to those speakers, it seemed to me when they 
spoke of Russia and the rope of sand, that perhaps it would be 
more just to speak of Russia and the rope of pearls; and the 
string which held them together fitted them for a princess's neck 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 385 

and the pearls are the tears which the prisoners in Siberia shed. 
Probably the releasing of the pearls will mean the regeneration 
of Russia, which will mean for the world something most precious. 
In all the misery they have had, there has been an unrest, a seeth- 
ing, seething which has to come to the top at some time, and 
the reason they can't find themselves just yet is because each 
element can't find out just what it can do. And when finally Rus- 
sia evolves, it will be through the spiritual support which she 
needs now more than anything else. Criticism is not going to 
help her. A Japanese army is not going to help anything like 
faith in her intention is going to help her ; and I feel, from the 
little I know of Russia, that the time will come when she will 
give us something so essentially interesting and individual when 
peace comes and the people can get back to a normal idea of life 
that it may be worth the agonies she is going through now.' 

When we speak of the outrages against civilization in France 
and Belgium, I think it is strange that we should think so little 
of that nation which barred the way for over six months. Serbia 
is something like the boy who, when he found the hole in the dike, 
put his arm through and kept the country from being over- 
whelmed. If Austria could have overwhelmed Serbia, she would 
have had an easy way to Bulgaria and Turkey. There were no 
English or French troops there to stop her. But that staunch 
little nation stood there and fought them off, and perhaps, as 
Rabbi Wise has said, we are paying the price of our indifference 
to the injuries to the Balkan nations, especially Serbia. Ten years 
ago, Austria took Bosnia and Herzegovina, and all Europe was 
quite complacent; and now that debt is being paid by the blood 
of countless sons of the rest of Europe. When we speak of 
restoration, I think we must count Serbia in. Unless we do, there 
is nothing to prevent the Austrian Empire from being a menace to 
the world. If she has her way free to the countries she desires, 
she certainly won't care particularly about Alsace and Lorraine ; 
and that has seemed to me the failure of every peace proposition 
that has been presented. We could not consider them ; they were 
all essentially unjust. 

I am not going to tell you anything about the Serbian char- 
acter. I want to say that when I saw the base hospitals in Eng- 
land, and when I saw in France the field and base hospitals filled 
with the men of England and of France, and then went out to 
Saloniki and saw the men of Russia and the men of Italy and of 
England and France, it seemed to me there was very little differ- 
ence in the men. All over the world, they were all doing their 
job ; they were all heroic ; they were all men who in the hour of 
trial measured up to the highest stature of a man. In times of 



386 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

peace we have known each other so little, in the artificial days in 
which we have lived before the war began we have criticized 
superficially; we have had little antagonisms because everybody 
was afraid to show himself. We thought the superficial to be 
our real selves, because we said it was wearing our heart on our 
sleeve, we felt it was indelicate to speak of what we really cared 
for most. And that is one of the good things of the war. It 
has broken down conventional values. "Out there'' nobody has 
very long to live, and there is no time to be idle, and when a 
woman speaks she tells you in the fewest words what is necessary 
to say. And when they act they do what is necessary to do. 
There is something in the majesty of the souls of men and women 
when you meet them on a battlefront that makes you see what a 
glorious thing it is just to be human beings. 

There have been so many women of every nation who have 
taken their part gloriously in the war, who have had the privilege 
of serving their country and doing their part, that the American 
women felt that it was not simply a duty, it is their right, it is 
just the opportunity for them to do their part, as the women of 
other nations have done theirs. 

In the beginning of the war, the women doctors of Eng- 
land organized the Scottish Women's Hospital, and in ten days 
they had a unit in Belgium. When the Germans came they took 
out their patients, and by the way they lost fewer from typhus and 
typhoid than any other hospital, and they took out their patients 
and carried them to safety. They even took up the floors of 
their tents and carried out all the things they would have to set 
up for those men who were sick. There was no panic, no excite- 
ment. The bridge over which they crossed was blown up by them 
in order that the Germans who were pressing them hard should 
not cross the bridge. You think of women as emotional but when- 
ever there is a crisis to meet they meet it calmly. 

Then these British women had two units in Serbia ; one of 
them was taken prisoner. They had one unit in Moscow to 
take care of refugee women and children. They have one outside 
of Paris, two in Saloniki. They have altogether ten hospitals, 
staffed entirely by women since the war began. 

As soon as this war started, the women physicians of America 
organized for war service. The six thousand women physicians 
in the United States, graduates of Johns Hopkins and other 
medical schools, and thoroughly equipped for service, registered, 
as I say, for war service; and it was found that they registered 
in greater numbers than the men physicians of the country. I 
feel that it is right that we should be in Europe, and that our 
hospitals, to be known as the American Women's Hospitals, shall 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 387 

parallel the Scottish Women's Hospitals, as expressing the patriot- 
ism of the women of America. The British public stood back of 
the Scottish Women's Hospitals. I expect the American public, 
particularly the American men, to stand back of the American 
Women's Hospitals. We are going to have a campaign, begin- 
ning on the 26th of this month and running for six days, so that 
it will be over before the Liberty Loan campaign, and during 
that time we are going to have headquarters at the Biltmore Hotel, 
and we want very much to feel that it is a practical idea, that we 
shall appeal to some of you to be captains of teams, that there 
shall be many teams of men of one captain and four members, 
who will make it their business during those ten days to send out 
literature which will give an idea of what it is proposed to do and 
to help realize hospitals which shall be for the care of women and 
children in the devastated countries of France, Italy and Serbia. 

There are no men doctors of military age who have any busi- 
ness to be doing civilian relief work. They are needed in military 
hospitals and will be increasingly needed as time goes on. It is for 
the women of America to take care of the women and children in 
Allied countries. Also we shall have need as the war goes on, of 
hospitals in which the men who have been returned from the 
military hospitals who are looked upon as unfit for anything but 
invalidism, can recuperate. They cannot go back to their villages ; 
there is no place for them to go. I have seen men who are the age 
of my father as I remember him who felt there was nothing for 
them to do but to commit suicide ; there was no future. 

Out in Saloniki there were at least fifty hospitals of two thou- 
sand beds each, and there were only six beds for women and 
children. It was necessary to keep the army on the front, and 
naturally they had to give place, and the women gladly gave 
place to the soldiers; but in the Greek Municipal Hospital there 
was a waiting list for about six months. I saw a woman there 
who was desperately ill, and there was no hope in the hospital for 
at least six months, and I saw two people in nearly every bed ; 
a child with a temperature of 103 in a bed with another child with 
a temperature of 105. We don't hear very much of the miseries 
of the uncomplaining women and children ; and therefore, it seems 
as if the men of this country, taking such good care of their own 
women and children, ought to be willing to take some thought of 
the women and children who are so absolutely helpless on the 
other side. 

The war has brought about a comradeship of women and men 
which is one of the good results of the war. You can't compass 
the war ; no amount of study ; no amount of reading about the war 
can give you the faintest idea. You have to go and be a part of it 



388 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

and it is a great experience in one's life to have been a part of it. 

I came home in a French hospital boat, and I saw on that boat 
men who were going to die in half an hour. There were only 
enough nurses for one to take care of about a hundred men ; the 
nurses being assisted by men orderlies who took care of the sol- 
diers, aside from giving them the hypodermics administered by 
the nurses themselves. The men's stomachs were in such condi- 
tion that they could not take medicine by any other method. In 
the hour that these nurses should have lain down they would go 
back and see the men they knew would not be there when they 
made their evening rounds. One of these men was given a pepper- 
mint lozenge. The nurse didn't dare say it was candy because all 
the other men would want it too. So she said, "This is something 
to refresh your mouth." He tasted it and smiled and she asked 
him how he felt. He said, "I am much better." In an hour he 
was dead. He knew he was dying. But a soldier never says he 
is suffering; he doesn't say anything about being afraid to die. 
No man or woman is afraid to die who goes "out there," death 
doesn't seem to be anything except what you can make of it, how 
you can use it, how ft can serve your country. 

And when that man was buried — that man and five other men 
were buried in the sea who had died that day — I thought I would 
like to write a note to his family and tell them how splendid had 
been the courage of the dying French soldier, and how it had in- 
spired every one else there. He was from the devastated part of 
France ; nobody knew anything about his family. It occurred to 
me that it was rather a mercy that they were all gone. 

When the men come back and find that we are taking care of 
their women and children and that when they are sick they are 
cared for by you and by us, it puts new heart in them. They can 
go out and fight, feeling there is a comradeship in arms and in 
the things they care most for in the world ; and that is the thing we 
are counting on your helping us to do. 



FOUR: BY PROFESSOR GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD 

Yale University 

The theme which is set for us to speak to is so sug- 
gestive and expansive that one can scarcely go amiss whatever 
one says about it. The description of the dragon that we are 
fighting might occupy not only many hours on the talker's part, 
but the whole of many volumes, — indeed, a whole library. I pre- 
sume that, apropos of that title "The Dragon," you have all heard 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 389 

of, if you have not all seen, one of the most caustic but true illus- 
trations in one of the English papers. This illustration repre- 
sented his Satanic Majesty as addressing the Kaiser and saying 
to the Kaiser, "If you don't stop calling me God, I shall withdraw 
diplomatic relations." That, I think, represents the nature of the 
dragon very well. 

But I am going to take my text from something much more im- 
passionate, as it seems, and much less picturesque, namely, a letter 
which I consider a very remarkable letter, that appeared in one 
of the New Haven papers on the morning of the 7th of August, 
1914. That, you will please remember, was only three days 
after war was declared. Let me read you some extracts from that 
paper. After remarking on the ignorance that prevailed in the 
United States with regard to the nature of the German Empire 
and its plans, this writer says: 

"Every traveler through Europe, and, in fact, all over the 
earth, has seen that the German merchant and trader and drum- 
mer is on the job. These German industries must be kept going 
at any cost of money and life. Under this imperative necessity, 
these German people have produced a more efficient system of 
production than any other in the world. The leaders of the Ger- 
man people have never deceived themselves as to the irrepressible 
conflict that such conditions must produce. They have, since 
1871, prepared the people for the coming fight. This fight is now 
about to be pulled off. Along with the most efficient manufactur- 
ing system, these same Germans have also produced the most 
efficient fighting system, for they know that the highways and the 
byways must be cleared of rubbish and impedimenta, and among 
these impedimenta the complacent and gouty British merchant 
and degenerate aristocracy and rulers are in the first line. It is 
writ large in the soul of every German that Briton must go." 

Then the author went on to say : 

"The British fighting machine is a negligible quantity. Ger- 
many needs the stepping-stones of Belgium and Holland and 
these they are about to take. It will cost them a few army corps 
and also dreadnaughts, but they are prepared to pay the price. 
All these paper agreements of neutrality amount to nothing. Do 
not be deceived by thinking that the Germans only mean to march 
through Belgium. The Germans are going to stay there." 

And then he goes on to predict that "the Briton will be starved 
out in thirty days, the Germans regarding the French mouthings 
as a joke, and Russia — she is beneath contempt. Unquestionably, 



390 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

it is decreed by the facts above that the world belongs to the effi- 
cient and the energetic." 

I call that a very remarkable letter. Let me call your atten- 
tion to these three points : 

That was written only three days after the war began. 

It was written by a German. Who he was we cannot find out. 
There has been some investigation lately even undertaken by the 
Government, to determine whether this German had any diplo- 
matic relations, any special means of information. It does not 
appear that he had. 

The third thing is this : Remember that it was written by a 
German in this country and designed, if not in an exulting way, 
at any rate in an informing and warning way, to tell the people 
of America what the German plans were. 

Let me, in my description of the dragon that we have got to 
fight, take that up point by point, and see how much of it has 
turned out to be true; in fact, more largely, more terribly true, 
than was implied, than was indicated by this obscure German. 

It is implied in the first paragraph that the avowed, active 
principle controlling the German nation at that time was an un- 
scrupulous and unlimited ambition for wealth and power. No 
bones is made about that statement in this letter. It is frankly 
confessed, and it is justified in the name of the Divine powers 
who are on the side of the efficient and energetic. That is our 
"Lord God" in the German Kaiser's phrase, "who is unqualifiedly 
on our side." 

Notice, in the next place, that it belongs to the German policy 
as formed and avowed, to possess itself of what it wants, wealth 
and power, dominion and lands, belonging to others, by force if 
necessary. That is to say, Germany is as a nation divinely ap- 
pointed on account of its superior efficiency and attainments hith- 
erto, to take what it wants in the world from anybody and to 
take it by force. That has, as a matter of fact, been the 
active policy, as avowed at that time by this obscure German, of 
the whole German nation from the beginning of the war on. 

Now notice, in the second place, that it is implied in this 
letter — nay, it is definitely stated — that the leaders of the German 
nation had been educating the German nation in that policy at 
least as far back at 1871. Many of you, I have no doubt, are 
familiar with the wonderful book written by Andre Cheredame 
with the title "Pan-German Plot Exposed." You remember that 
Cheredame spent twenty-two years before the war began, in inves- 
tigating the formation of this pan-German plot. In conducting 
his investigations, he visited one hundred and seventy-seven of 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 391 

the principal cities of Europe and America and Asia, and there is, 
therefore, in that book the whole thing exposed before the war 
of 1914 began, all planned ; and notice that it is declared and truly 
declared there, that the leaders of the German nation had been 
educating the German people in that idea. 

In my judgment — I speak of it hesitatingly — our President 
hitherto has made something of a mistake in making any such 
difference as does not exist between the guilt of the German gov- 
ernment and the guilt of the German nation. And those of us 
who have watched the thing have become thoroughly convinced, 
as I have no doubt President Church has, of this truth, that the 
German nation through and through, not their Kaiser only, not 
their army and navy only, not the Junker class and Hamburg 
merchants only, but the whole body of the German people, from 
the children just out of the cradle to the Lutheran and Catholic 
clergy and the professors in the university had become thoroughly 
impregnated with that idea. They were God's specially privileged 
nation ; they were privileged to take what they wanted, and they 
proposed to do it wherever they came across what they wanted. 

And Germany went more gaily to that war, stepping with a 
proud goose-step to that war, expecting in a few weeks to be in 
Paris ; they went more willingly to that war at the beginning, than 
we as yet have entered willingly into the war; the whole nation, 
including the different classes of the Socialists which are at the 
present time beginning to break away as they have discovered how 
vain their plans for gathering to themselves the wealth of other 
nations have turned out. 

I might go on from that to endorse what has been said so 
eloquently and forcibly here, that the punishment cannot, if it 
falls where it deserves, fall only on the army and navy and the 
Kaiser and his family and the German Junkers ; it must fall on the 
whole nation of Germany. 

Notice, in the third place, that Germany has deliberately 
brought on the war. Or, to use the expression of the author of 
that letter, "This fight is now being pulled off." It had been 
planned for a whole generation. It is now being "pulled off." 
Twice before, at least, the German nation had thought the time 
had come to "pull off" the war which they had been planning for. 
I was on the 10th of July, 191 1, spending the evening in the 
Authors' Club at Whitehall, England. Just as I was parting from 
my friends and going to my lodging, there came in a stalwart, 
typically clothed and framed Englishman of the more noble and 
manly sort. Some of the gentlemen with whom I was conversing 
said, "Smith" — (he afterward became the authorized censor of 
the press. He was the press correspondent delegated by the Brit- 



892 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

ish government to visit the Japanese-Russian War) — "Smith, 
what is the news ?" "The news, gentlemen," Smith said, "is that 
this week Germany and England have been nearer war than they 
have been for years and years before." There was an exclama- 
tion of surprise and astonishment, so far as Englishmen ever ex- 
claim about anything, and there was evident disbelief in that state- 
ment. 

I kept my ears open and had some specially good means of 
learning what had taken place. You will remember Lloyd 
George's Guildhouse address on that occasion, how in very mild 
terms he intimated that Great Britain had no particular interest in 
Morocco, no special reason for supporting France there ; but that 
if it became necessary, the Government expected the people of 
England to stand by it. That infuriated the German Government, 
and they made a formal demand upon the British Government that 
they should repudiate the statement of Lloyd George. They de- 
manded that of the Cabinet. The Cabinet informed the German 
Government through its diplomatic representative that, on the 
contrary, what Lloyd George had said represented the opinion of 
the Cabinet. Then they actually had the audacity to call on the 
British Government to discipline, to dismiss, its Minister ! They 
were quietly told that it was not the habit of Great Britain to take 
care of its Cabinet according to the behests of any other govern- 
ment. That stopped the war in 191 1. It would have been "pulled 
off" in 191 1 if they had not been compelled, told that England 
would not suffer France to be defeated. They thought that Eng- 
land's hands were tied. They were pretty badly tied up; the 
miners were striking; the railroad employees were striking; 
windows were being smashed by the women and they were stick- 
ing their hairpins into the policemen. There was lots of trouble 
in England; but when the German Government found that in 
spite of all that, England was going to stand by France if the war 
was "pulled off" at that time, they postponed it. 

They thought the same thing of England, as you well know, 
in 19 1 4. They thought that the Irish troubles had tied up Great 
Britain's hands so that she would let Belgium be traversed and 
France be ruined. If they had known, perhaps, that England 
would support France ; if they had known that it would defend 
Belgium with anything like the courage and tenacity with which 
it has been defended, the war might have been postponed a little 
longer. But that war was sure to come. It was planned for and 
had been planned for by the whole German nation for a whole 
generation of time. 

The next thing is that Germany deliberately brought on the 
war at that time. We know that now. We do not know all the 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 393 

secrets of those twelve days that elapsed between the ultimatum 
to Serbia and the declaration of war; but there have been whole 
books written about that, tracing every hour, and there can be no 
doubt that Germany deliberately brought on the war. 

Another thing is that the Germans did not expect to pay any 
regard to their treaty. They were not forced, as a matter of life 
and death, to go through Belgium. Their General Staff deemed 
that, under the circumstances, that was the quickest way to get at 
France, to take Paris, then come back and administer a crushing 
blow at Russia. It was deliberated whether they should attack 
France through Belgium or through Switzerland. 

They decided that the easiest way was through Belgium. They 
deliberately broke that treaty, and they regard, as this writer says, 
"They regard" — that is part of their policy — "treaties as mere 
scraps of paper." And if we had now, as our ex-President Taft is 
proposing, a treaty made to enforce peace, leaving Germany 
undefeated, unbroken, unpunished, they would have as few 
scruples in breaking that treaty when they got ready as they had 
in breaking the treaty with Belgium. It is a matter of fixed 
principle with Germany to pay no attention to treaty obligations ; 
for, such is their theory of the state, that, no matter what Ger- 
many does, if it advances the interests of this God-chosen and 
superior people, it is advanced in that way ; it is forgiven and ap- 
proved by the powers on high, or, to use the Kaiser's terms, by 
"our Lord God, our unconditional ally." 

Notice now also how the Germans have carried out their 
treaties with other nations in matters of international agreement. 
They have gone on, grabbing whatever they could lay their hands 
on, and they are at it now. No treaties that can be made with 
them, unless they are punished, thoroughly whipped and put out 
of court, will have any hold on them. They are taking over Fin- 
land; they have taken over a large part of Russia. They have 
prepared another way to the British possessions in India and to 
the Far East; and if they are not stopped they will go on. For 
that reason, I am in favor of the Japanese being used more largely 
in this war, and I may say also that I know the Japanese very 
thoroughly. I have been to Japan three times. I have somewhat 
more than a mere speaking acquaintance with some of their best 
statesmen. I have just as much confidence in the diplomatic policy 
and in the statesmanship of the Japanese as I have in any one of 
our allies. I have just as much confidence as I have in our own 
diplomat, — whether that is saying any more than I said a moment 
ago, I don't know ! 

Now, not to dwell on, but just to enumerate one of the most 
hurtful of the influences from this quietly written letter by an 



394 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

unnoticed German : The list of atrocities, in character, in number, 
in length, committed not simply here and there, but committed 
right along, day by day and hour by hour, by the German army, 
and not only by the German army, but by the Prussian and Turk- 
ish armies, are something unparalleled in history. To tell them in 
detail as they are now known would not do before a mixed 
audience. It would scarcely be considered decent before an aud- 
ience of gentlemen. And the accumulation of evidence on this 
point, gentlemen, is so complete, so manifold, that it will be laid 
up to the everlasting disgrace of Germany. Indeed, it is so com- 
plete that it is incredible. Twenty-five years from now, when 
the accumulated evidence in all forms is brought before the 
future historians, brought before your children for study it may 
be, they will say, "It is too bad to have been true. It is incredible 
because it is so complete." The number of non-combatants that 
have been murdered ! Have you read a book written by a French- 
man, called "On the Road to Liege ?" He visited at the risk of 
his life those little hamlets that lie in half-moon shape from the 
south of the forts of Liege around to the eastward. They did 
not take those forts until some days after they had taken the city 
of Liege. When the soldiers came back they went to these ham- 
lets from their defeated efforts and they murdered right and 
left; they massacred in those little hamlets from ten to fifteen 
thousand; in fact, they shot up one town in Germany because 
they thought they had got over into Belgium. They didn't find 
out their mistake until it was pointed out. And in one city — I 
have the book in my possession, the book that has the names and 
ages and occupations of 620 persons varying from children in 
arms to old men and women of seventy that they massacred in 
one of the cities of Belgium. And it was not just this soldier and 
that soldier; it was the whole body of them, egged on and per- 
mitted by their officers. 

Another form of treachery was the display of white flags, 
the shelling of thousands of old men and old women, the bombard- 
ing of hospitals — and they are keeping that up now — the shoot- 
ing of drowning men, the looting and robbery of banks and pri- 
vate dwellings, of chateaux and cottages and wine cellars. (One 
reason why Providence permitted the Allies to win the Battle of 
the Marne was because the Prussians were so drunk. All along 
the roadways were strewn with thrown away bottles of cham- 
pagne.) Arson and bombarding of churches and public buildings, 
systematic devastation of the country, the poisoning of the sources 
of water supply, the distributing of poisonous germs, as anthrax, 
for the destruction of cattle, the deportation of whole populations 
for work not only in their fields and mines but in the trenches, 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 395 

the murders and deportation of women and girls for vile purposes, 
the insistent and persistent violation of women, hundreds and 
thousands of them, violation of nuns in the presence of their 
priests, while the priests were tied to their chairs, and all kinds of 
horrid things, lustful and criminal, of the vilest kind. 

That, as I take it, gentlemen, is the kind of dragon that we 
have to meet. May I, in closing, tell you what I think we must 
do in order to meet that dragon, to fight that dragon? And it 
comes down upon America more and more heavily to do this. 

In my judgment, though I let that go to the last, we disgraced 
ourselves by not protesting against the invasion of Belgium ; by 
not entering into the war sooner. We could have shortened it 
by two years. But we must let that pass. It belongs to the ir- 
revocable but not to the remediless past. The thing for us to do 
now is to be in that war in every way, and this demands — if I may 
draw the one demand out into three parts — these three things : We 
must require of our President and of our Government in all de- 
partments and operations as bearing on this war immediately, the 
highest possible efficiency. You know it has been a sort of slogan 
with us, "Leave it to the President." Well, I am not going to 
object to that, but I am going to say that it is time for us to sup- 
plement it with advice to the President and advice to the Gov- 
ernment and advice to Congress. We should say to them all, to 
the men who are in the places of responsibility, "Do you, in this 
place of power and responsibility, leave it to the men who know." 
That has not been done up to this present hour. I think we are 
doing a little better in that regard ; but there is not the slightest 
doubt in my mind, and I could give you confirming testimony 
without reserve, that we might have done a good deal better than 
we have done, especially in respect to the splendid beginning of 
an army that we have raised, if we had left more to the men that 
know. 

The truth is, and it is not a peculiarity altogether of our gov- 
ernment; — it was largely true in France, perhaps more true in 
France than with us ; it was largely true in England, and they suf- 
fered, until they found it out, all through the years 1914 and 191 5, 
that a great many of the men in the government — not so true 
with England, perhaps, as with us — a great many of our govern- 
ment habitually in the civil and in the military service, the men 
who represent us in Congress and in all branches of our service 
are rather small men, not very big men, not very competent men. 
There is no country in the world that has such a large proportion 
of competent business men as we have, and competent professional 
men. They are ready and have been from the start to do anything 
that the government might ask, — I know that to be so — ready to 



396 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

offer their services to the government. The government is just 
about beginning, more freely than heretofore, to avail itself of 
those men. 

Why gentlemen, do you know that there were two firms in the 
city of Pittsburgh that contracted with the British Government 
for 93 million dollars' worth of shells, and when they made that 
contract not one of them, their manager or principal men, had 
ever seen a shell; and none of their workmen knew anything 
about making shells. They spent nine million dollars in equipment 
before they began to make the shells. Their contract expired in 
14 months. Three days before the end of that 14 months, they 
laid down the last shell on the dock in New York to the perfect 
satisfaction of the British Government. Those men could have 
made shells for us if they had been asked ; they would have been 
glad to. But, more and more, I say, in order to kill this dragon 
we have got to insist that the men who have experience, who are 
trustworthy, who are sincere and patriotic, patriotic as a certain 
percentage of our former officialdom has not been, should have 
things under their counsel and more largely committed to their 
control. Let the red tape be cut ! Let partisanship be banished ! 
Let motives of personal and blood relationship be altogether sub- 
ordinated, and so let the boundless resources which certainly exist 
in this country of energy and wisdom and devotion be made al- 
together available. That is the first thing, I believe, we must do 
to kill the dragon. 

The next thing is this: We must frown down on and sup- 
press all kinds of what is known as profiteering ; but we need not 
make mistakes about that. Doing a large business with a good, 
large profit is not necessarily profiteering. It is not our great 
corporations alone that are in danger of injuring us by profiteer- 
ing. The carpenter who does not do his work in the best way, 
the riveter who would rather strike than drive a proper number of 
rivets in a day, the miner who would rather have three days' pay 
suffice him for the whole week, — they are profiteers that we ought 
to frown down on and discourage. Doubtless, they need rather 
delicate handling, but with that handling should be shown a cer- 
tain amount of purpose. The farmers who feed their wheat 
to the hogs, or hold their wheat for extravagant prices are to be 
frowned upon for their profiteering. 

There are some kinds of manufacture that I can't quite under- 
stand. Mrs. Ladd is continually occupied with Red Cross work. 
We have just raised $220,00x1 for local money. The womer in 
New Haven in their Red Cross enterprise are spending a thou- 
sand dollars a day on all kinds of material. She tells me that 
gauze which cost 1^2 cents a yard now cost 5 cents ; that flannelette 



FIGHTING THE DRAGON 397 

and ordinary unbleached cotton cost about three times what it 
used to, that a hank of yarn that could be got for 70 cents now 
costs $2.50 or $2.80. I don't know that the cotton growers and 
manufacturers are profiteering, but it seems to me that there is as 
much reason to inquire into them as there is into the iron and 
copper manufacturers. 

But, above all, we must talk no more about peace at the present 
time. We must suppress in our own hearts and on our own 
tongues and do what we can to discourage in our pulpits and 
press this untimely discussion of terms on which peace can be 
made. 

One hates to say that about this blessed word "peace." There 
is no word — there was no word formerly, — that moved me more, 
being of a somewhat turbulent and ambitious temperament, than 
that word "peace," and I did think — I began my college career in 
the midst of the Civil War — so I did hope I could end it in the 
midst of peace and get my own soul in a condition of peace ; but 
there is nothing now that disturbs me more than to hear just that 
word "peace." 

There is no possibility of any compromise between the 
Entente Allies and Germany in the present situation, or in 
anything like the present situation ! in fact, perhaps never 
since the battle of the Marne have things been in a more critical 
condition than they are at the present time. Never has there 
been less opportune talk about making peace than at the present 
time. As you have been told over and over again — I need not 
repeat it — if the war ends with things in anything like the present 
condition, Germany has gained more with regard to its future 
domination of the world than it set out to gain. It has gained in 
a different way, but gained more. Austria, — and I do not see any 
reason for making any great distinction between Austria and Ger- 
many — Austria is dominated as Germany is dominated from Ber- 
lin ; Turkey is dominated from Berlin ; Russia now more and more 
is being dominated from Berlin. The old path from the Persian 
Gulf to Europe, along the line of the half-completed, more than 
half-completed, Bagdad Railway, has been to a certain extent 
broken by the British Army ; but here is this new way, this easier 
way, this equally available way, for grasping the whole of the Far 
East, open now with regard to its western end, quite fully open 
by the domination of Germany. 

We cannot stop. As I look upon the matter, there is only one 
great question in the world at the present time. Everything else 
is subordinate to that question : Which form of the state, which 
form of civilization, shall triumph? Shall it be the Teutonic 
form? Shall it be the form which aims by force to rule the world, 



398 ONE HUNDRED PER CENT AMERICAN 

irrespective of the wishes and rights of those who are ruled ? Or 
shall it be that form which takes account of the individual, of his 
aspirations, of his soul, of his spirit, and tries to embody that in 
the government and elevate it and raise it nearer and nearer to 
the divine model ? That is the one great question, and, so far as 
I can see, it rests with the United States at this present time more 
than with any other nation ; although we expect France and Great 
Britain to hold the line, which they undoubtedly will ; but with our 
coming in increasingly more and more, it is going to bear down 
heavier and heavier on our shoulders, and it will depend on how 
we do our duty more largely than on any other consideration, how 
this world-potent question is answered. 

Which of the two forms of governing men, which of the two 
forms of civilization, shall triumph in the earth, and go on to the 
lifting or to the degrading of the soul of man? 



H ^3-79 




'■■ % s '-& % ^ 

^>% W ,, "^^li)'1b , ' ^La Deacidified using the Bookkeeper pro 

Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: ^ oQOl 

PreservationTechnolog 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVA 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 

<. -: 









*^0< 






7^ *b>* 






4.°^ 



<*U » 















V • ^ ... % \* b .„. 






JAN 19 r 



fc|# N. MANCHESTER: 
INDIANA 46962 









